South Island Day 13: Kayaking Doubtful Sound

Doubtful Sound is less accessible than Milford Sound and less accessible means less tourists. Whereas in Milford you can drive right up and board your boat, to get to Doubtful your tour will include a free scenic cruise over Lake Manapouri and a scenic bus ride through Wilmot Pass, also absolutely free of charge. It always amuses me when they do that to prmote a tour, its like saying "free scenic flight with every skydive." Great, I'll leave my magical teleportation device at home then and save on batteries.

Today we'd be kayaking Doubtful Sound which would be interesting given it still hurt to change into fifth gear on account of the fact I still ached like a bitch from the river boarding. We arrived at the kayak base in Manapouri at stupid o' clock in the morning and after everyone had arrived we were transported to the fiord itself and kitted out in wetsuits, splash jackets, splash skirts and life jackets. It was drizzly but not too cold. I can handle drizzly. It's my northern English upbringing.

Lake Manapouri

Doubtful Sound

It was an awesome day though, so much more peaceful than Milford Sound, no aircraft taking off every two minutes and we only saw like one other boat right at the end. The worst thing was the sandflies, they're vicious and it's illegal to kill them in the Fiordlands. With it being a national park everything within it is protected. Bugger that. I have issues with involuntary blood loss and I figured the DoC wouldn't miss a few of the evil little bastards as I smeared couple over the bus window.

The Maori legend behind the sandflies (Te Namu) is that once upon a time the Fiordlands were a solid mass of land and the demi god, Tuterakiwhanoa (don't ask me to say that out loud) was given the task of carving it out. He started at the bottom and made his way up to Piopiotahi (Milford Sound) and when he was finished he asked Hinenuitepo, goddess of the underworld, to have a quick butchers at what he'd done. Anyway she loved it. She loved it so much that she got worried that the humans would also love it too much and never want to leave so she unleashed millions of Te Namu to remind us of our frailty and death.
And then came Aeroguard to protect us from these winged spawn of the devil himself but even coating yourself with that every couple of hours isn't always enough.

After a full days paddle we headed back to the campsite to chill out and start relaxing. No more getting up early for the rest of the holiday, no more i-site vouchers proving we'd paid for activites to look after, just copious amounts drinking tea and generally not moving much at all on our meander back to Christchurch.

written by

Koala Bear on February 15, 2009 from Doubtful Sound, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip

tagged RoadTrip, LovinIt and SouthIsland

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