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Rachel's Travels...
20 November - Today I went on a cruise around Doubtful Sound. The attached picture to this postcard shows what it can look like, but it rained and was overcast all day, so my photos really dont do it much justice. It's quite difficult to actually get to the sound. We first went by boat over Lake Manapouri, which took about 45 minutes. It was really misty, cloudy and raining so I couldn't see any of the surrounding mountains which was a shame. When we got to the end of the lake, we were taken on a tour of Manapouri power station. The station is mainly housed underground, and we had to go down a 2km long tunnel to reach it. It was really cool going down underground - we were basically under/inside a mountain! The tunnel was through solid rock, and the walls of the power station were rock. Every one down there carries torches in case the power goes off!
After the power station we got on a bus to go over the Wilmont Pass. The road is really dodgy and had to constantly be maintained as it gets a lot of slip damage. We passed some nice waterfalls and also the Libby river which was really gushing due to the sheer volume of rain there had been recently. We reached Doubtful Sound, and a place called Deep Cove and got onto another boat. Doubtful Sound is quite different from Milford Sound - for starters it's so much quiter. It's also a lot bigger and doesn't have as big mountains. But it still has millions of sand flies. The sound was quite impressive and there were loads of waterfalls (because of all the rain). I saw a pod of bottle nosed dolphins and we followed them around for a while - they were amazing - I tried to get photos of them but failed quite miserably. They weren't interested in playing with us so we left them alone. Shortly afterwards we came across a Fiordland Crested penguin by itself, and a little further away we saw a whole group of them that didn't seem to mind us being there. They are quite small, but really cute.
We headed out towards the sea, and the swell was quite big - the boat was bouncy about - that was fun. Because the weather was so bad and therefore the sea was rough, we didn't stay out in the sea for long and returned to the sound. We were probably on the sound for about 4 hours. It was really beautiful there, but it was a shame the weather was so bad. Although you get more waterfalls when it rains, you dont get to see how beautiful it is when it's poor weather. So I bought some postcards and the sound looked beautiful in them.
Got back to Te Anau around 6pm, and the weather had improved slightly - I actually saw some blue sky. I was supposed to go to the glow worm caves in the evening, but it was cancelled as the caves were flooded! The last time that happened was 5 months ago, which shows how much rain there had been. I was gutted about that as I really wanted to see the glow worms. So just went back to the hostel and read a book.
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