Te Anau to Doubtful Sound

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Pictures of Doubtful Sound at http://photos.yahoo.com/[e-mail] , folder New Zealand thru Dec. 13.
We have breakfast in our room again and I prepare a lunch for us to eat while in transit to Doubtful Sound. We pack small overnight bags and store our other bags at the motel. We walk into town and pick up some items we need and return to the motel to wait for our bus.
The bus picks us up with another couple from our motel, about noon. The trip to Lake Manapouri takes about one hour. We take a ferry across Lake Manapouri and board another bus to take us over Wilmot Pass to Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is actually a fiord, like Milford Sound. Captain Cook named it Doubtful Sound because he sailed to it, saw the narrow entrance and thought it was doubtful he could get out of it if he sailed into it. We arrive on Doubtful Sound about 2:30 pm and board our little cruise boat. It holds 70 passengers and I think we have just over 50.
We are taken to our rooms and requested back in the salon for a briefing. Immediately following the briefing we will have our afternoon activities. We can either ride in the tender craft to view wildlife and plant life or go sea kayaking. The only other time I have ever tried to kayak was when we were on the whitewater trip on the Salmon River in Idaho and I couldn’t keep the thing upright. Michael was more coordinated and did a much better job. Anyway, I was feeling a little intimated about the whole thing but I thought if I was going to try it again it should be when it wasn’t going to cost a fortune for me to do it. Besides, the water was smooth as glass in Crooked Arm of Doubtful Sound, so I thought it would certainly be easier than trying it in whitewater.
There were so many people kayaking that they said they would have to take us in two groups. The ones of us that were at the end of the group asked if we could take the tender craft tour and make it back for the second kayaking group. They told us they could make that work, so we boarded a tender craft. As soon as we were in the water we saw several dolphins in the water a good distance away. The Fiordland area of NZ is about the southernmost range for dolphins so we were excited to see them. They ended up swimming very close to our boat and Michael said it was the closest he had ever seen dolphins. I used to see them and actually have been in the water with them when I was doing a lot of scuba diving in the 1970’s, but they are always a treat to observe.
We returned to the large boat and it was time to board the kayaks. These were wider kayaks that are more stable than regular kayaks and I was feeling more self-assured when I saw that none of the original group had turned them over. We were not in the water for long when I felt the first raindrops. I was just getting the hang of kayak paddling, which is very different from canoes or rafts, when I felt the first raindrops. Being a NZ veteran, I had my rain jacket on and raised the hood when it started raining harder. We paddled around for a while longer then returned to the big boat. I was surprised at how much of an upper body workout the kayak paddling was, but was feeling pretty confident with my new skills.
Back on the boat, Michael and I cleaned up and were summoned to the salon for some hot soup. Michael stayed on the deck to observe the sights and I took the opportunity for the boat to rock me into a nap for about an hour.
There are three entrances to Doubtful Sound. We went out one of them into the Tasman Sea. It was quite at bit rougher than the water in the sound. We circled and came back into the sound through another entrance. We stopped at an island to look at fur seals. Fur seals were almost wiped out by the seal fur hunters and they estimate that their numbers are only 5% of what they were 150 years ago. There was a beautiful sunset over the entrance to the sound.
I came back up and it was time for dinner. They had a nice buffet and we sat with a couple from Atlanta, Stacy and Bill. They were the other couple that was picked up at our motel. Since we don’t really do a lot of typical tourist things, we don’t have the opportunity to interact with many Americans here so we talked t

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