Departing from Te Anau at 6am, we were picked up by the two Kiwi guides, Matt and Luke. These guys were university students who guide throughout the summertime (its now the start of the summer break here in NZ) and had lots of great insight into the area and other things New Zealand.
We had chosen to go to Doubtful Sound to kayak for an overnight trip as opposed to the major draw of Milford Sound. Milford Sound is the main tourist attraction because many tour operators do the bus and boat tour at Milford as the road goes all the way to Milford sound. The trip from Queenstown is a 12 hour round trip with 10 hours on the bus and 2 hours on the boat. The trip is supposed to be great, but we decided we would get more out of the Doubtful Sound trip, and chose to do the kayaking instead.
The route to DS is a car ride to Manapouri, an hour boat ride across Lake Manapouri, twenty minute bus ride over the pass to Deep Cove at the start of DS. It makes sense why less people travel to DS and go to Milford instead as it is a much more accessible route. At the point where we loaded up the kayaks and entered to water at Deep Cove, the Department of Conservation has an educational site which is for school groups which is similar to the many different educational centers at the different parks were visited. It was encouraging to see that the NZ people really integrate the school children with the amazing outdoor opportunities in this country.
We were fortunate to have great weather and calm water when we paddled as the area receives over 200 days of rain a year. We had great warm calm sunny weather both days.
This trip we completed with guides as opposed to the previous multi day hikes we had completed alone. The benefit of having the guides was they provided the tents, cooking equipment and had camp set up for us when we arrived. The guides also knew where the wildlife was located and accessible waterfalls to hike. There was even a campsite setup for us to stay and cook that was operated by the tour company.
These guides were students at Otago University which is located in Dunedin. Some of the fun events that would take part at the school included the Under 500 annual car rally. The rally was people would bring in cars from all over the country that were worth under $500 dollars and decorate them with wrapping from beer advertisements, All Black colours and symbols or any other theme they decided to use for their car. They said it was a big party and hundreds of cars would be part of the car parade and a great event.
The guides told us what some of the best youtube videos that Kiwi’s were watching, the chocolate and other types of annual races that Dunedin students would hold at Baldwin street, the steepest street in the world that we visit in Dunedin, and possum hunting as children. Possums are a big pest in New Zealand as they are hated by everyone here. The possum was introduced to New Zealand in the late 1800’s for the fur trade, they have no natural predators in New Zealand and the population has exploded to tens of millions of possums. The guide was telling us that when they were children, what his parents would tell him is either you go to bed or you go possum hunting. We though he was joking, but they did in fact hunt possum. He said one person had a stick and a second person was responsible to shake the tree to make the possum fall out. When the possum fell, the stick person was responsible to club to possum. The possum fur would be sold as there is still a big market for possum fur. Some great insight to the life of a kiwi!
The fiords of Doubtful Sound were very impressive and we were happy that we made to extra effort to take the kayak trip. The sand fly’s were swarming at certain places when we were inland that make it comparable to black fly season in Canada, but it was part of the adventure in Fiordland National Park.
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