NZ Fiording

---

It is raining. In fairness we are in Fiordland, where it rains quite a lot. Apparently in some parts eight metres is not unheard of. It does make finding activities to do more difficult to come up with. We have spent the day going to a Glow Worm cave (does not rain much inside caves) and have been to see a special video shot of the area in a cinema in Te Anau town centre (biggest town in the area, comfortably more than 100 people live here).
The big expenditure recently has been an overnight stay on Doubtful Sound. It is pretty hard to get there over land and historically because the prevailing wind is westerly it is not easy to get out if you go by sea; even Captain Cook did not fancy it, hence the original name Doubtful Harbour. Our journey took us on a water taxi over Lake Manapouri (about an hour crossing), before a hour bus ride over the most expensive road in New Zealand, before getting to the port at the inland end of the Fiord. The road is only there at all because Lake Manapouri is used to generate Hydro Electricity and support facilities at the power station have been built; however, due to the remoteness it is estimated that the road cost $2 per centimeter to build.
The advantage of the remoteness for us is that very few people are on the Fiord. We were there for 24 hours, or so and did not see another vessel. It was truly very special as hopefully our pictures demonstrate.
In the previous week or so we have travelled the Southern Scenic Highway through the Catlins along the Southern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. This is harsh country with amazingly strong winds - trees actually grow at 45 angles!! With a bit of luck our pictures give a good impression of this rugged coast line. The exciting bit about this part of the world is some of the wild life. It is home to numerous seals and penguins. Again we saw a few good examples, but unlike David Attenborough neither of us were keen to hang around for too long to get the perfect photo, it was just too cold. We do have some nice pictures of an extremely rare yellow eyed penguin, so long as no one is bothered about not being able to see its’ head.

---