I stayed in Te Anau for a couple of days and visited Doubtful Sound, Manapouri Lake and Power Station. Doubtful named by Captain Cook although larger than Milford the entrance from the Tasman Sea is quite narrow and he thought that it was doubtful there would be enough room to turn a sailing ship if they entered. Again this is not in fact a sound but a fiord.
I took a trip from Te Anau to visit a Cave that contained thousands of glow worms. This involved an evening trip across lake Te Anau. It was not possible to take a any pictures in the cave. The lake covers 360 square kilometres and after a heavy storm will regularly gain a metre in height that is an increase of 360,000,000 cubic metres of water not counting the flow out at the end of the lake. That's a lot of rain!
There is no access to Doubtful Sound by road, first we took a trip across Lake Manapouri.
Another tree avalanche.
At the end of the lake is the Manapouri 700 MW Hydro electric power station. We went by coach down a 10km tunnel to the power station.
The generator room, the turbines are below the floor.
A turbine from an earlier era before a huge upgrade to increase the output by 200MW.
We then had a 2 hour 4 wheel drive coach trip along the Wilmot Pass to get to Doubtful Sound.
There are regular traps along this road and throughout New Zealand as they are trying to rid the country of all the vermin introduced by the early settlers. Possums, rats, weasels stoats rabbits, wasps to name a few. Our guide told us in this area when they first started trapping they caught 5000 possums in the first month now they are down to 50 a month.
Doubtful Sound at last.
There is a large seal colony on the island at the entrance ahead.
They are obviously all very busy!
There was also an albatross colony nearby.
The weather held out well until this point at the Tasman Sea but was not so good on the return journey. It was a very long day and we did not get back until late evening.
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