As we turn the page on our calendar, we just enjoyed the most spectacular day we've had on the trip!!!! We know it sounds like we've said that before and probably have (and likely will again) but this time we mean it:)

We did what we normally avoid today, and took an organized tour. We had no choice really. The only way to get to Doubtful Sound is to take a boat across a lake, drive over Wilmot Pass on a road that has no access to it except between the boat landing and the Sound, and then charter a boat on the Sound itself. The other option is coming in from the Tasman Sea which didn't seem very likely.

So, we booked a tour with 'Real Journeys' and held our breath that it would be worth it. After it was over, Val and I were walking back to our camp site and both agreed it was worth the money and then some. Just to give an idea of how beautiful it was, I have a 512 megabyte memory card in my digital camera, and I ran out of room for photos. I was frantically deleting ones I knew I didn't want, changing settings so the pictures would be smaller and I could get more of them on, and finally ended the day with my camera telling me I had room for 4 more pictures. Hopefully, the photo album I've posted won't bore you, but it was incredibly hard to narrow them down.

The trip starts out by crossing Lake Manapouri. This is New Zealand's 5th largest lake and 2nd deepest. It is at 222 meters above sea level (roughly 735 feet), but the mountains that spring out of the lake make it feel much higher. It is high enough to form the inlet for an amazing underground hydro-electric plant that produces over 800 megawatts of electricity. It's an incredible feat of engineering. Due to environmental concerns, the developers were forced to build it underground. The only parts above ground are the power lines that emerge from it, and a small intake port. In fact, the development of this plant sparked the longest running environmental protest in New Zealand. The plant was basically purpose-built to supply energy to the aluminium smelting plant on Tiwai Point in Bluff - the 14th largest smelting operation in the world and located over 100 miles away. Big peanuts for a small nation. In order to make it work, the plant would need to be built within some of the countries most beautiful and delicate landscapes. The area has since been designated a World Heritage Area (along with Mt. Cook and the rest of the fiordlands of the south), so we're pretty sure there won't be any more development within the boundaries.

The water enters at the edge of the lake, drops nearly 600 feet to the turbines, and then exits through a 10 km (6.2 miles) tunnel until it empties into Doubtful Sound. (About 5 million gallons an hour run through this tail race.) The photos I took, both inside of the generator room and outside, don't even begin to show how impressive this place is. It is clear that there were serious scars to the landscape from the construction, but this is healing and in time will be completely filled in. Mother Nature is pretty powerful here.

After crossing the lake, we road in a coach bus through 2km of underground tunnel to get to the bottom of the water shafts where the turbines were located. The tunnel actually spirals around and down the mountain making 2 'loops' to make its way to the machinery level. It was very eerie being this far underground and riding in a huge tour bus. When we got to the bottom and the driver made a 3 point turn, explaining he had to turn an 11m bus in a 6 m area, he got a standing ovation from the crowd:) He suggested that anyone who wants to try this at home, just park your car in your garage, close the door and try to turn it around.

We learned that the tunnel was excavated by drill and blast method and more than 1,024,000 cu. yards of rock and material were hauled out. Also, the engineers that designed the tunnel had figured 50 deaths over the course of the excavation, apparently authoriites thought this was acceptable and approved the plans. Actually 16 men lost their lives during the 8 year operation, astounding considering the conditions they worked under. They were blasting into solid rock and most of the structure does not require shoring of any kind - really impressive.

After visiting the power station, we boarded the bus again and headed over Wilmot Pass. This is a 22 km (13.6 miles) gravel road that was built for the construction of the power station at a cost of $2 per linear centimeter. That's about $60 per foot for a gravel road!. Back in 1963, that was a fortune. The road twists and turns through some amazing scenery and finally drops down to the Sound adjacent to the end of the water tunnels from the power plant.

Here we boarded another boat for a '3 hour tour'. (Fortunately, Gilligan wasn't with us.) Again, the photos probably don't do justice to the beauty of the mountains and scenery, but it was hard to look at something and not want to capture an image of it. The Sound was formed by seismic and glacial activity over the past 450 million years. The area is right at the edge of two tectonic plates, the Indo-Australian and the Pacific. The I-A is sliding under the Pacific and pushing it up. Thus forming the Southern Alps and the beautiful fiordlands of the southeast corner of the island. The glaciers that have developed and receded over time have formed the flat-bottom valleys that are seen everywhere. The area is also incredibly wet. Portland is a relative desert compared to Doubtful Sound. To help put it in perspective, Portland gets roughly 60 inches of rain per year. Lake Manapouri gets roughly 46, West End where the power station is gets 151 inches and the most inland end of the Sound gets 212 inches. They get all this rain in a little over 200 days, so when it rains, it pours! As you can see from the photos, we were there on a day when there was not a single cloud in the sky over the Sound.

We followed the sound all the way out to the edge of the Tasman Sea where there is a Fur Seal colony that lives there part of the year. It's a unique colony in that both the males and the females come here to breed. Normally, the males stay in one place year round and the females travel to them for breeding. The females also give birth to the pups at this location. The tough part is that they give birth and breed at nearly the same time. There is an 8-10 day gap between giving birth and mating. Pretty tough to be pregnant 355 days a year!

After visiting the seals for a while, we headed back in to the Sound and checked out a bunch of smaller coves. Every turn revealed more spectacular cliffs and majestic mountains. We headed into one cove and the crew asked everyone to move outside onto the decks. When everyone was situated, they turned off the engine and the generator on the boat for about 5 minutes and we sat there in total silence. Well, except for the birds, wind and waterfalls. It was amazing! Part of this was to make a point. When Captain Cook had first gone into the Sound (not on his first trip), the crew had to raise their voices to be heard over the sound of bird song. Today, the wind and waterfalls almost overpower the birds singing. This is because their numbers have declined so much in the past couple of hundred years due to non-native predators having been introduced. DOC is working to help eradicate the predators, but it's a long slow process.

We finally reached the dock and boarded the buses back to the lake and the boat ride back to Manapouri. This was a tour that cost us three days budget, but we would do it again in a second. If anyone is planning to come to New Zealand, don't miss this trip.

Tomorrow we're off to Queenstwon and then Wanaka. I was planning to scuba dive in Milford Sound tomorrow, but the timing just didn't work out:( Guess I'll have to make it up somewhere along the way!

Hope all is well wherever you're reading this from.

Eric & Val