Doubtful Sound

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After Milford Sound I spent the night at the YHA in Te Anau a really nice small town on the edge of the fiord area and has the largest lake in the South Island . In the evening I went to the Fiordland on Film - Ata Whenua - Shadowland and had some food in a local Italian restuarant. On Friday 21st October I boarded the Navigator for the overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is a very large and naturally imposing fjord (despite its name) in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound. It took second place after said Fiord as New Zealand's most famous tourism destination. Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' in 1770 by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail. It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.

A Spanish scientific expedition commanded by Alessandro Malaspina visited Doubtful Sound in February 1793 to conduct experiments measuring the force of gravity using a pendulum, a part of the effort to establish a new metric system. The officers of the expedition, which included Felipe Bauzá y Cañas, a cartographer, also made the first chart of the entrance and lower parts of the Sound, naming features of it. Today these form a unique cluster of the only Spanish names on the map of New Zealand: Febrero Point, Bauza Island and the Nee Islets, Pendulo Reach and Malaspina Reach.

The overnight cruise run by Real Journey's was good fun with Kayacking laid on in the afternoon and we managed to see quite a bit of wildlife when we headed out of the fijord to to the Tasman sea. The bufet dinner on the boat was amazing with second helpings a must and then after they put on a slide show explaining how the fijordland was created and the types of animals that inhabited the area.

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