Doubtful Sound: Cruising in a Land Untouched

Crossing the Wilmot Pass

After a walk around, a read of some of the power station displays, as well as information on the flora and fauna of Fiordland, we are gathered to get on the bus for the next leg of our trip, crossing Wilmot Pass.

Our driver, Alan, shares a real wealth of knowledge about the area we are passing through, from how the road was the most expensive road built in New Zealand at $2 per centimetre to information about the wildest of wilderness surrounding us. The bus journey is about an hour along gravel road among mossy beech forest – 100% native New Zealand and unlike anywhere else on this earth.

There’s nothing like the forests of Fiordland!

Thick moss hangs onto beech trees where their trunks and branches get more crooked the higher we go. Every so often a break in the trees will reveal a waterfall casually gushing along the side of the road. This is definitely not an uncommon sight in one of the wettest places in the world!

As we cross over the highest point of the pass (which isn’t very high considering this is the lowest mountain pass in New Zealand thanks to the mountains being so close to the sea) we are given amazing vantage points across untouched forested mountains.

A cheeky visitor

The bus parks up at a view to reveal our first glimpse of Doubtful Sound! Wow! This is what makes the long journey to get here worth it: seeing the fiord from different perspectives, one that’s more breathtaking than the last.

However, believe it or not, there is actually something that takes the attention away from the Doubtful Sound view ahead of us: the cheeky kea! Four or five of these alpine parrots land on trees around us, making noises that sound more like cats than parrots. Even a fluffy infant kea distracts us away from the two parrots that have landed on the bus determined to pull the roof apart with their beaks!

After the kea show, we hop back in the bus down to the waterfront where we board the Patea Explorer. The large catamaran has viewing areas on top, up front, out the back and floor-to-ceiling windows inside. We won’t miss a thing!

Cruising on Lake Manapouri

So this is it. Doubtful Sound, show us what you’ve got!

To be honest, the towering and steep glacier-carved mountains are captivating from the get go! How can they not be?! Just when the landscape can’t get more dramatic, it somehow does as the boat takes detours into vast inlets with higher mountains, steeper cliffs and thicker forest.

We move just over 40 kilometres from our starting point at Deep Cove out to where the fiord meets the Tasman Sea. The waves get a little choppier as the boat sails around some rugged islands. It was around this point that they witnessed a rare sighting of a whale yesterday, so Neil, our guide giving commentary on the boat, has us keeping our eyes peeled for whale and even penguin sightings.

Penguins, dolphins and seals

We might not see whales but we do see the Fiordland-crested penguins, another sight exclusive to this national park!

Three of them waddle to the side of an island then jump in, one after the other, hopping in and out of the water in a graceful dance.

Further along Doubtful Sound, the boat slows down so we can get a closer look at a pretty huge pod of bottlenose dolphins! At first, it’s just their fins we see emerging in the distance. Then we hear the release of air shooting from their blowholes – they are right beneath us. They swim and emerge around the front and sides of the boat giving us great photo opportunities. Just as the boat starts to gain speed, the dolphins use this opportunity to end their show with a splash! Two of them leap out of the water directly in front of us, belly-flopping their huge bodies back in the water. We get SOAKED! To say we got soaked because we are that close to a dolphin is something we really don’t mind!

To end the wildlife performance, we see one lone New Zealand fur seal rolling around on a rock doing what seals do best: sleeping itself silly!