Fiordlands

Wednesday evening was spent packing up so that we could leave for our west coast adventure straight from work on Thursday afternoon. We arrived in Te Anau around 8pm that night, checked into our tiny cabin, and went into town for a quick bite to eat and The Ranch. After some last minute organization, it was off to bed but only until 5am Friday, as our kayaking trip to Doubtful Sound began at 6.15am.

Our guide picked us up and we headed to Lake Manapouri, stopping for 5 other people along the way. Strangely, all 8 people in the group turned out to be American! They included a retired judge (originally from Rochester) and his wife from DC, a couple of which the guy lives in LA, and his girlfriend in Puerto Rico (they only see each other when they go on vacation), and another guy from LA. Our guide was from NZ but lives in Canada part-time. It ended up being a great group of people.

Upon arrival on the docks of Lake Manapouri (voted the Most Beautiful Lake in NZ), we unloaded the trailor and reloaded everything onto the boat that was taking us across the lake. The ride was nice and calm, and we enjoyed some early morning scenery. When we arrived on the other side 50 minutes later, we unloaded all of our gear, changed into some really lovely wetsuits, and reloaded everything into another trailor. Then, back in the van for a drive over the mountains, across Wilmot Pass to Deep Cove, our put-in at Doubtful Sound.


Deep Cove from Wilmot Pass

At Deep Cove, more unloading and reloading into the kayaks, and we were finally ready to go. After a quick paddling and safety demo by our guide, we hopped into our tandem kayaks (2 person, fiberglass and Kevlar “tanks”) and were on our way. Due to extremely windy conditions, it was a slow go, especially for the older, inexperienced couple. But eventually, we all made it out of Deep Cove, into the main part of Doubtful Sound. Unfortunately, we were met here by even stronger winds, resulting in some pretty substantial waves.


Loading Up the Kayaks for our Journey

At this point, we needed to paddle part way up the sound, heading into the wind, to the tip of Elizabeth Island. If we tried to paddle directly across to Hall Arm (our destination), we would likely be blown into a rock face which would have been very difficult to paddle out of given the current weather conditions. So, we paddled our little arms off, taking on the large waves, until we reached the island. The older couple ended up needing a bit of assistance from our guide, who was attached to them by a rope at this point. After a short break, we had to ferry across the roughest section of water, eventually ending up at the entrance to Hall Arm. During this part of the paddle, we were warned to watch out for “smokers” which look like little tornadoes on top of the water. The smokers occur when 2 separate wind currents blowing perpendicular to each other collide, causing the tornado-like phenomena. These can flip a kayak so we didn’t want to come across one. Luckily, nobody did, and we all made to unscathed to the calmer, more protected waters of Hall Arm.


Doubtful Sound


Some More Views

The difference in here was amazing. Wind died down from 15-20 knots to just a light breeze. The water was almost completely flat, which made the paddling much easier and more enjoyable for everyone. The scenery, as in the entire sound, was beautiful. Huge green and granite mountains rose straight up out of the water, making it obvious that they dropped down under the water just as steeply. There were a fair amount of waterfalls, and some birdlife flying overhead. While we were paddling in the sound, we saw the spouts from whale’s blowholes in the distance, and found out that this was a pod of very rare Arnoux whales, hardly ever seen, and only seen in the sound for the first time 2 days before we saw them.

We paddled to the end of Hall Arm, enjoying the sights, and then back up it a little way to our campsite. The whole day took about 6 hours of paddling, and we covered about 18 kilometers. Not too shabby! We carried the boats away from the rock beach, back into the woods where we set up camp. After setting up the tents, we all changed into dry clothes and congregated in the net shelter to get out of the rain and away from the horrid, biting little sandflies. Inside, we hung out, cooked some dinner, and even drank some wine, courtesy of the tour company. We were all off to bed by 10.30 as we were to be woken at 6am for another full day of paddling.


Soggy Camp in the Rainforest


Bug Free Zone

Next day, we took down camp, put on our wet clothes, packed up the boats, and were back on the water by 8am. The early morning paddle was beautiful, and we were able to enjoy the peaceful calm and quiet for about the first 2 hours. When we got back out of Hall Arm, to the main section of the sound, the winds had once again picked up and, combined with the opposing tidal current, made for some more large, capping waves. Once again, we paddled into the wind and ferried across to Elizabeth Island, then up it’s coast and around the top where we were careful not to get blown into another cove. Once we rounded the island, we were relieved to find that we got to paddle with the wind back down to the end of it. The waves were still pretty substantial here so Craig and I had some fun trying to surf the waves in our boat.


Hanging Clouds, Peaceful Morning

Once past the island, it was back into Deep Cove for the home stretch. In here, the winds had died down significantly, so the paddling was pretty easy. We tried sailing by holding 2 boats together and holding up a sail with the paddles. Figures, as soon as we wanted to sail, the winds became almost non-existent. Still, it was a fun challenge, and our group finally got going pretty fast, only to be stopped by crashing into Andy’s group, who had stopped in our path to take down their sail.

After the sails were stowed, we paddled slowly, stopping frequently to take pictures and look around, back to the take-out. We were all sad that the trip was over, but happy to change into dry clothes. We repeated to whole process from day one, unpacking and repacking, driving across the pass, boating across the lake, and getting dropped off at our campsite. It was an awesome trip, something you can’t experience anywhere else, and well worth every penny and ounce of effort put into it. We couldn’t have asked for a better guide, and the crazy weather made for some fun (in spite of some anxiety) paddling.

Upon return to our campsite, we set up our tents, hung a clothesline to unsuccessfully dry some clothes, took some much needed showers, grabbed some dinner in town, and hit the sleeping bags. During the night, it got so windy that we actually considered the tent may collapse. It didn’t, but we woke to continued crazy wind, broke down camp, and headed up Milford Road to Milford Sound. Andy took a cruise of the sound while Craig and I went for a hike at a little trail called the Chasm. This was really cool, huge water gushing through windey, holey, carved-out rocks. Too many tourists back there though, so we didn’t spend much time looking. We headed back to pick up Andy and then off to find some more hiking.


Chasm

There was a 3 hour return hike along the road, called Lake Marian Track. The description sounded cool, so we stopped and headed off up the trail. It wasn’t long before we came to a river with some more giganting whitewater, flying over and under huge boulders and old, moss-covered trees lying across it. It was gorgeous and we spent some time taking it in before heading on up the trail.


Andy and Katie along the Creek

The rest of the trail was up up up, over some trees, rocks, and roots. It was a really cool green trail and we had fun scrambling and climbing on all the obstacles up to the top. The description I read had said the trail ended at a high alpine lake (Lake Marian) at the top, but it didn’t hint at the beauty of it at all. We walked through a clearing, rounded the corner, and were staring at, by far, the most awesome lake I have ever seen. It was pretty large, clear blue, surrounded by huge, towering, jagged, granite cliffs, with several waterfalls cascading down the sides. Gorgeous. I can’t begin to describe it otherwise. We sat and enjoyed it for awhile, and Andy took a dip. Then, unfortunately, we had to head back down.


Trio at Lake Marian


Lake Marian

Along the road back toward camp, we stopped for a short hike to a 275 meter high waterfall and then an even shorter hike to a “historic grave.” The grave was for a guy who “lost his way and died here from exhaustion” back in the late 1800’s. Kinda cool.
We drove a little further until we found a campground called Cascade Creek. We got the last available site and quickly set up our tents so nobody else could steal it. Our site was the only one in an open field but it was right on a creek. We cooked some taco’s for dinner and watched the rain roll in. We decided to retreat to our tents around 9pm even though it was still light out. It was a wise decision because the wind once again picked up even stronger than the previous night, and the rain barreled in. Luckily, our tent again made it through the night, despite it’s ageing. It was still raining pretty hard though, so we decided to pack up and head back to Dunedin, instead of hiking as planned in the soggy conditions.

It was nice to get home early to unpack and dry out. Andy got ready for his trip to Mt. Cook. He left (in our car) on Tuesday morning for his first driving on the left hand side of the road experience, and returned Wednesday afternoon unscathed and excited about all he got to see in awesome Aoraki Park. Craig and I would rather have gone with him, but had to work instead. Oh well, only 4 days this week, then another fun weekend! We spent the last night of Andy's visit eating some yummy fresh chinook salmon from the Mt Cook area and hanging out, laughing at old stories. I was sad to leave him at the airport this morning despite the new gray hair I found last night as a direct result of his visit. We had a great time with him! Andy, we hope you're home safe and sound reading this after your long long long flights. PS-some of the sheep around here are walking a little funny, any idea why?

Many Weekend Pictures