Doubtful Sound

May 20

The bus trip down to Fiordland yesterday took all day, from Christchurch to Te Anau. It was a good trip though long. The bus was a double-decker and part way through the trip the people who were sitting at the front panorama windows got off and I moved up, as well as an elderly lady. We started conversing and so we both had some companionship for a good chunk of the day. Her name was Marion Donaldson and she suggested I look her up the next time I’m in NZ. She was quite tickled that I also know a Marion Donaldson in Canada. An Indian family got on in Dunedin and we ended up in conversation with them too. We ended up with a back of the bus party up at the front panorama window. The little girl was very cute. She was maybe 5 years old and very excited about snow. At first she wanted to know whether the beautiful low lying mist on the fields was snow. Then the plastic coverings over hay piles, or some sort of feed. When I pointed out the snow-capped mountain peaks off in the distance she was beside herself with excitement.
The landscape was most certainly beautiful, the sunset spectacular.

Today I joined and excursion on the Doubtful Sound. In theory it’s actually a fiord because it was formed by a glacier and not a river. It’s called Doubtful because when Captain Cook was first navigating in he doubted being able to harbour anywhere. The whole day was beautiful. First we needed to cross Lake Manipouri, then a bus ride over a mountain pass before setting sail on the fiord. The weather was overcast but that added to the tranquility and peace of the place.
The shades and lines and mirror images were soft and deep. It would have been absolutely perfect to be there in a kayak in solitude, or at least with only a very few people. That having been said, the boat we were on was also beautiful, maybe about 80 people on it. It didn’t feel crowded, maybe because many people stayed indoors because it was a little cool out. But the scenery was just too beautiful to be looking at it from inside.


I met a family from Melbourne. They were very nice. The two girls are in grades 3 and 5. We chatted for much of the day. Later, on the return trip another woman started talking to me too. She’s traveling with her husband and daughter who just finished high school. They also happened to be from Melbourne and they too were very nice. We coincidentally ended up at the same restaurant for dinner and they invited me to join them. We had great conversation. It was a good day.

My next stop is the Franz Joseph glacier. It’s taking me longer to get there than I’d hoped because of bus schedules. There aren’t a lot of choices plus I’ll also have to spend a night in Queenstown. But that all means that I’m heading back up direction north…towards Auckland. (As an aside, I’m a little directionally confused in the southern hemisphere. I see the sun setting in the west but north still feels like south and vice versa. I’ve heard that people from Down Under feel the same way when they visit the northern hemisphere. Interesting.)