A Maori legend has it that long ago a god-like being, Tu-te-raki-whanoa, wielded his axe to carve out the landscape of South Island. If you look at a map of the southern end of South Island, you might well believe it. Indeed, the island's southwestern coast, facing Australia and the Tasman Sea, does look like it has had an axe taken to it - convoluted and narrow inlets seemingly hewn out of the spine of the Alps. Southland's dozens of fjords are in fact the result not of a cosmic axe but of millions of years of erosion by immense rivers of ice - glaciers. Now retreated, the glaciers dug deep V-shaped valleys into the mountain rock. Fiordland (with an i...) is the result. Our gateway to Fiordland is Manapouri, a small settlement that has played
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