Wednesday morning - waterfalls and dolphins

We woke this morning to the sound of heavy rain and blusterey winds. We had moored last night in a small bay off Thompson Sound, but a westerly wind had brought the weather to us! Breakfast started promptly at 7 am, with copious amount of food while the boat motored back into Doubtful Sound.

A highlight of the morning was the chance to see so many waterfalls after the heavy rain of the night before. It was hard to comprehend the size of these waterfalls, so the captain took us close to the shore.

Here is a small section at the top of one of the falls : note the size of the trees relative to the water!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And see the wonderful patterns as this mass of water hits the lake itself.

 

 

 

This shows a small section at the base of a mountain. Note the two small falls of water on the right hand side.

 

 

And here's how it looks when you're almost directly underneath the flow.

 

 

Sim, the wildlife expert on our boat, collected a bucket of water for us to try drinking.

Cheers!!

 

When possible the captain put the sails up on our boat. Not particularly effective, but fun and he enjoyed it. Rain continued off and on all morning, and we all got fairly wet.

 

 

Later on we saw some more dolphins, and this time a few came and swam by the bow of our boat. Wonderful to watch, and another tick on the 'bucket list'.

 

We also spent about 5 minutes with the engines off, people stationary, and no cameras so we could listen to the sounds of the fjords. Falling water, and then birdsong could be heard, and we watched a young fur seal swimming along under the trees.

The boat made it's way back to the landing wharf, and then we took the coach back over the Wilmott Pass to the visitor centre on Lake Manapouri. We were just about to board the ferry back to the parking area when we spotted an employee and asked him why there are no tours of the actual power plant at the moment. He explained that there is some fairly heavy maintenance work being done, but there are still tours possible, just not advertised. We had about 3 minutes to make up our minds, so now we are sitting at the visitor centre, waiting 2 1/2 hours until we can go on a tour! We had only planned a walk this afternoon, and it keeps raining, so a change of plan seemed a good idea!

 

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