'Sounds' more like a Fjord!

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Leaving Queenstown with our new bus driver 'Grumpy Pete', we drove to Te Anau, a small town that until the proposed tunnel from Queenstown to Milford is built, is the gateway to the Sounds. We stayed in Te Anau Lakeview Holiday Park, which was pretty accurately named..
After checking in, we got back on the bus and headed for Milford Sound. Arriving in mid-afternoon, it was quite cloudy but we hoped the weather would hold. We went on the Real Journeys catermaran along the sound towards the Tasman sea. It was a beautiful place with many waterfalls cascading down from the mountains each side. Once we arrived at the mouth of the Sound, the heavens opened and it was soon too wet to stay up on deck.
Luckily the tea and coffee was free so Lin was quickly warm and I munched on cookies..
We had more close up views of some large waterfalls and also a small group of fur seals, then the boat returned to the dock.
In Te Anau the following day, we walked some distance around the lake to the far side and back, then in the afternoon while I did some blogging (again.. see how committed I am to my readers!) Lin went on a tour of some Glow-worm caves.

Having felt abit cheated by the weather at Milford, it was great to be able to take a trip to Doubtful Sound. This involved being taken by bus to Lake Manapouri which we crossed by boat with our multi-talented driver/skipper Phil. (An unexpected bonus came in the form of a tour down into the Generator Hall of the Lake Manapouri power station, as Phil drove the bus down a spiral tunnel 2 km underground.) 90% of the power generated from this station is used by the Aluminium smelting plant at Bluff under an agreement with the Australian Government who agreed to base their smelting plant in New Zealand if the power station - providing cheap electricity - was built.

We then drove up and over the Wilmot pass down to the start of the Sound. Phil went out in a dinghy the next boat and picked us up from a little jetty. Although still quite cloudy we hardly had any rain on this trip and it was fantastic to see dolphins swimming along beneath us between the twin hulls of the boat.
A very scenic trip , we thoroughly enjoyed it and took / attempted to take all sorts of 'moody' shots. Phil was a great guide and tok every opportunity to give us some extra info or answer questions.
Unfortunately, this completed our time in Fjordland, (Sounds are formed by rivers, these were actually formed by glaciers so are technically Fjords!.. see we're learning) and we had to return over the pass, across the lake and on the bus to the Holiday park.. what a mission!

Our next driver Nevin, got us up early and we left Te Anau at 7:30am for the drive down to Invercargill. Not much to do in this town, and strangely you can't buy wine here from supermarkets?.
Some of the guys stayed here one night, but for us it was just a shopping stop before our trip to Stewart Island!

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