As the engines roared to life at 6:15 on the dot, we made the painful transition from sound sleep to consciousness. Our journey that morning would take us back up the main body of the sound and down the length of Hall Arm, the most picturesque of the sound's arms. There was quite a breakfast spread in the dining room, so we helped ourselves and looked out at the rainy landscape. The water flow had increased substantially overnight, and falls we had seen the previous day were now raging at 3 to 4 times their normal volume. Cascades, 300m vertical falls, even curtains of water flowed in torrents, surrounding the ship. At one point, the captain pulled the bow right underneath one of the 'small' falls (over 50m tall) and one of the crew filled up a pitcher of 100% pure NZ water so we could all have a drink. We drove all the way to the end of the arm, and looking into the neighboring valley, there were no less than 8 huge waterfalls rushing towards the sound. By that time, I think we were both suffering from complete waterfall overload.
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| Waterfalltastic |
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| Swollen river on the way out from Doubtful Sound |
As we pulled into Deep Cove, we concurred that while it was sad that the trip was over, we had certainly gotten our money's worth, and didn't need to see any more waterfalls for quite some time. Of course 'quite some time' turned out to be about 5 minutes, as the shuttle bus took us back over the pass and we saw the results of the massive rainfall. As the ferry arrived back in Manapouri, the rain had slowed a bit, and it looked like things might be dry to the north. We had about a 6 hour drive ahead of us to reach our destination for the night: Fox Glacier. By the time we fueled up and got on the road, it was about 12:30. We headed back through Queenstown, where it was sunny and at least 85 degrees, stopped and had lunch at a BBQ place in Wanaka, and kept on pushing north. The sheer length of the glacial lakes are unbelieveable; we passed through Wanaka, came around the side of a small mountain, drove along another massive lake (Hawea) for 10-15 minutes, and came back around to find we were less than halfway along Lake Wanaka. The gorgeous blue-green colors were unlike anything either of us had seen in the U.S. or elsewhere, and it was a challenge to keep my eyes on the road and off of the views.
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| Looking out across Lake Hawea |
The fun was soon over as we saw storm clouds gathering over the Haast Pass, our next obstacle in reaching the west coast. The rain started as sprinkles, but as we pushed west, it turned into a full-on downpour. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the sky turned quite dark as we hurtled down the other side of the pass. The waterfalls (of course!) were literally spilling onto the roadway at times, and the swollen Haast River looked to be at capacity. After 2 hours of white-knuckle driving, we arrived on the west coast, and the Tasman Sea was looking quite dismal. After another 90 minutes, we had arrived in Fox Glacier and checked into our accomodation. I immediately got online and checked the weather for the following day - we had a lot riding on it. The forecast was for showers in the morning, with the weather clearing in the afternoon. Our heli-hiking trip was scheduled for the next morning, but I knew there would be more trips in the afternoon, so we just hoped for the best. It was already getting late, so we headed down the street for dinner. We made it back to the hostel by 10, flipped through our two channels, and called it a night.
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