Te Anu, Doubtful Sound, and Queenstown, New Zealand, 27-30, January 2015

After a good meal and a good night’s sleep, we had a leisurely morning: sleeping in ‘late’ (until 0800), a great breakfast at the Waiau Hotel in Tuatapere with local mutton and beef sausages and whitebait omelets, collecting our laundry, getting a slow leak in a tire fixed, and catching up with our e-mail. Around 1100 we checked out, and headed north for Te Anu, about 2 hours journey. (Check out the locations mentioned in this blog at the following map link: https://goo.gl/maps/fQWJB)

The last 10% of a sheep herd crossing the road on the way to Te Anu.

We checked into the lovely Lakeside Motel in Te Anau with a view of Te Anau Lake, bought some groceries and ate lunch. Yesterday’s threat of rain had materialized, and we took turns with the computer and doing errands/exploring the town. Ray bought new hiking shoes to replace the pair which were killing his feet on the Hump Ridge Trek, Edie bought a more comfortable rain jacket, and we both walked up and back along the lake promenade.

The next day we got up early for a 7 am pickup for a cruise on Doubtful Sound, far nearer, larger and last crowded then the famous Milford Sound. We took a bus to Lake Manapouri, then a boat across the lake, then another bus on the Wilmot Pass Road, and finally another, larger, boat for the 3 hour

cruise on Doubtful Sound. Waiting in the rain for the first boat, we were trying to convince ourselves that a misty, rainy day was more of the proper atmosphere for Fiordland.

Crossing Lake Manapouri

And then the sun came out!

Input gates for underground hydroelectric generator station.

View from Wilmot pass.

Lakes Te Anu and Manapouri form the reservoir for a unique hydroelectric scheme, built to supply electrical power for an Aluminum smelter in Bluff. The scheme was initially opposed by environmentalists who campaigned on a slogan of “hands-off our national parks”. But a compromise was reached in which the levels of these two lakes are maintained within their natural limits, and the

cycle and rate of reducing water height takes into consideration the needs of the flora growing on the shores of the lakes. The generators are located underground – vertical shafts run several hundreds of meters to the turbines. The Wilmot Pass road along which we were bussed was originally built to haul the generators, which were transported by sea to the end of Doubtful Sound, to the power plant.

A view from Doubtful Sound.

The first Europeans to see Doubtful Sound were Captain Cook and his crew. The scientists on his expedition wanted to land, but there was a strong westerly wind, and Cook was “doubtful” if he would be able to maneuver his ship windward to return to the sea. On the chart which he made of the NZ coast, he noted this location as doubtful, and the name stuck, but it’s not clear if he simply meant the term as a description, or intended it as a name. It’s not the only instance where a Cook adjective became a place name – Manly in Sydney Harbor is so named because Cook described the Aborigine inhabitants that he saw there as very manly. About 20 years after Cook’s visit to the mouth of Doubtful Sound, a Spanish expedition sent long boats into the fiord, and several features therein are named for members of that expedition. Incidentally, both Doubtful Sound, and the more popular Milford Sound, are technically fiords, meaning that they were carved by glaciers, and they have the characteristic U-profile of glacial valleys.

Fur seal in Doubtful Sound.

It’s not technically a water fall, because the water doesn’t leave the rock – just a very steep river!

Hi there…

The guiding on the tour was actually quite good, informative and with the typical Kiwi dry sense of humor. The bus driver over the Wilmot Pass informed us that most of what he would tell us is the truth. So when we got on the boat in Doubtful Sound and heard the guide say “hold on to your heads – we only lost 5 or 6 yesterday”, it took us a while to realize that the guide was talking about “hats” and not “heads”. And we weren’t the only ones confused – even a Scottish couple from the Orkney Islands with whom we shared experiences heard as we did. In general, as compared to the Aussies, vocabulary is not as different to what we are used to here --- there’s little “baby-talk” (mushies, swimmies, pokies, Woolies, etc) but the accent, especially in the more rural areas, can be a challenge for us from time to time. The manager of the Okaka Hut on the Hump Ridge Track asked us in the morning, “How was your beet?”. It took us a few seconds to realize that “beet”=bed! Its seems the Kiwi tongue likes to be higher in the mouth than ours, so the ‘eh’ becomes ‘ee’ and ‘d’ becomes more like ‘t’ (but sometimes the opposite).

One last glimpse of sheer beauty

We returned to town after the cruise at about 1530 and set off on a 3 hour walk along the shore of Lake Te Anau, with a quick stop at the DOC information center, and a longer stop at a wildlife center. The wildlife center has large caged areas for a few of the rarer native bird species which are hard to spot in the wild. Of course, Ray spent an inordinate amount of time photographing them, as well as other birds encountered along the way.

Black billed gull. Compare with the red-billed gull poster in an earlier blog.

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Canadian geese a long way from their ancestrial homland.

A resident of the wildlife center.

Takahe – a flightless bird thought to have been extinct for 50 years, but rediscovered in 1948.

We reached the control gate which controls the flow of water from Lake Te Anu into Lake Manapouri, as part of the hydroelectric generation scheme described earlier, and the entrance to the Kepler Track (a NZ Great Walk), and then retraced our steps to the motel.

Around Te Anau

Next morning, we drove to Queenstown, stopping several times at turn off points, both to gawk and to let the higher speed locals zip by us – yes, they do go faster on challenging routes also by car.

Lake Wakaitipi, outside of Queenstown.

Our airbnb has a great view over Queenstown and also a very challenging driveway to drive up. It seems to be typical both here and in Christchurch, for several houses to share a driveway up steep slopes. No one wastes any more property space then needed to go from point a to point b, so the driveway is also very steep. By the way, this b and b is run by former Latin Americans. After settling in, we decided to utilize the remaining hours of sunlight outdoors.

We visited the Chinese settlement in nearby Arrowtown, is a touristy area with many shops and restaurants built in the style of the gold rush in the late 19th Century. Many Chinese participated in the gold rushes in the American west, in Australia, and in NZ. The group that came to Otago was from Guangdong, at the time that the exploitable fields where running down and the Kiwis had moved farther north. Not entirely by choice, the Chinese stuck together in their own settlement, and it was pretty cramped and primitive. The community center was Ah Lum’s store and home was relatively big but tens of miners would crowd in the evening to socialize. This corner of Arrowtown is a park, and several of the Chinese settler’s huts have been restored.

More typical dwellings:

By the way, while we were there at least half of the visitors were of Chinese origin. We couldn’t help but marvel about how today Guangdong’s living standards are fast approaching those in NZ.

Next, we set off on a 3 hour loop track around German Hill. From the trail description, we thought we’d be contouring through forest then through a river gorge. However, we found ourselves on a rather steep climb through the woods- there was apparently a reason that the trail was marked moderate to difficult. We were rewarded by some really incredible views.

And we marveled at the Kiwis (the people, not the birds, which we haven’t seen yet). While we were plodding along this path, several of all ages (some young, but yes, even some our age), whizzed by us jogging at a good clip.

שב עלי פרפר נחמד.......

It looks rather like lilac, but smells like a wild rose.

Over the past 36 hours, it has been raining steadily and at times quite heavily – and thus we exploited this time to catch up on this blog, and hence the barrage of postings. We’re now caught up! And we are hoping that the rain eases enough for our upcoming 3 day Routeburn tramp to be pleasurable. We are preparing for the forecasted rain, but hoping that our luck with the weather hasn’t run out altogether. All the best to all of you, and stay tuned to see if we survey yet another trek, or get swept away in a torrent of rain!