The weather reports and our darker suspicions are true. The bursts of rain are heavy enough to wake me, at least. Not to worry the cruise must go on although our cold picnic doesn't seem so appetising with the thought of it being soaked in rain. 
As ever we were late setting off so missed the great photo opportunity of the one-way street, "Wong Way."
We race down to Mangapouri then to Pearl harbour and a loop of the town before coming to a rest, in time, in the (time) unrestricted car park. We hadn't seen a single car on the way so, thinking it might be a Christmas Day cruise for two we had a small surprise to find ourselves in a full queue of maybe 100 people.
The operating company, Real Journeys, has the appearance of a big travel firm for which I had low expectations but this family owned business was top notch. We had a 45 minute catamaran ride across Lake Mangapouri where the pilot rarely left us without commentary. Not just drab perfunctory commentary but he was off on a tangent about this and that most of the time. The rain hadn't let up and the cloud and mist had descended such that we only saw the lowest of peaks. It was a funny bunch of people on the trip, all studiously avoiding and Christmassy element.
Stage two of the trip was a 45 minute coach trip over the Wilmot Pass a heavy duty gravel road specifically built in the 60s to transport the heavy turbine equipment shipped from overseas from Doubtful Sound (sea side) to Lake Mangapouri (lake above sea level-side). When the tour company owner bought the business in the 50s the route was a walkway (and two boats) which took a day on its own. They only did a few trips a year. Now a good 30-40 thousand troop through each year. I don't think our driver stopped speaking for a second for the trip over, constantly telling us about the flora en route which mostly was lost as the coach fogged up. More noticeable were the enormous numbers and size of the temporary waterfalls as a result of the overnight and continuing rain. There was an opportunity to trot out at the "Moss Gardens." The area suffers from the peculiar phenomenon of tree avalanches. The bare rock is covered by lichens and mosses which in turn support ferns and trees with shallow, buttressing root systems. Heavy rain causes the trees' roots to lose grip and start an avalanche leaving bare rock to start the process again. Not worth getting out, though, as the rain had become pseudo-torrential and you got [um] quite wet.
We had another stop at a swollen river which was murky white [from crashing over rocks] from top to bottom as far as the eye could see. It made me think of all those rivers and chasms we've seen over the last two weeks looking rather limp by comparison. The road itself, allegedly the most expensive (NZ$ 2 per centimetre) and steepest (1 in 5) is a bit hair raising not least because of the heavy use of a Kiwi invention, the exhaust brake, whatever that it, which was pressed (stamped on?) a lot.
On the Doubtful Sound side we boarded another slightly bigger catamaran where again the skipper provided an excellent commentary despite the lack of things to see. The average annual rainfall triples or quadruples over the mountain into the fiord [to some 7m or so] and this year was passed in September. Today it appeared to be torrential for the entire time we were in the Sound not aided by the 20 knot catamaran vortexing the raindrops into the [observation] decks.
The view, however, was more than worth it. Every slope had waterfalls all over them. There are a few permanent waterfalls but the rain created one every twenty yards, no kidding. And not just poncey little 50m drops, we're talking about falls starting at the tops of the 1000m shear faces on either side and then bouncing their way down the mountains to the Sound. Then there's one next to it, and one next to it, and... Whilst we didn't have the great vistas that the promo shots show I think we had something much better and rarer.
The epitome of today's trip was at the end of Doubtful Sound (named by Captain Cook as Doubtful Harbour because of his fear of a lack of wind to manouver his ship between the steep slopes -- he obviously wasn't there on a day like today [where a bit of a gale was now blowing]) when the skipper said we'd pop into the Tasman Sea to show us what the outside was like but declined when the sea was getting a bit too rough. The barometer's dropped five points over the last hour to 980 so I guess the cold front has come through six hours early.
He enjoined those taking photos to take care as he was turning inside the mouth of the Sound [and the full force of the Tasman would hit them on the observation decks]. Naturally, I took to the deck to films things [this sounded interesting]. Of course, the captain is safe inside a warm dry cabin and schmucks like me are in the teeth of a storm unfettered by obstacles over the Tasman. [After the boat began to turn] I managed about three seconds before realising that the back half of me (one arm wrapped around a pole against the gale) was soaked through by the horizontal rain and it was opportune to retire to the comfort of the cabin. Still, on the brighter side, the other passengers got a good laugh.
Surprisingly [in the conditions] not a sign of the local Bottlenose Dolphins, fur seals, yellow eyed or blue penguins. Who looks stupid now?
We dropped into the hydro-electric power station on the way back which is quite interesting. More so for the subtle undertone of the building of the second "tailrace" tunnel (exhaust). It seems that without it, the surge tunnel (where water that doesn't fit into the tailrace goes) was in danger of flooding the entire system -- it [the surge tunnel] being just another tunnel off the access tunnel we drove down through. It couldn't possibly go wrong, could it?
A point to make on the way back being that the peaks poked their noses through the mist revealing a fresh layer of snow [thanks to the storm that had passed over]. A NZ White Christmas, not a common thing we're told.
We head off for Invercargill [after our 8 hour Doubtful Sound trip], our home for the next two nights, a two and a half hour trip down the Southern Scenic Route which , most importantly to us, becomes drier the further down we go. Invercargill seems a slightly odd place, built on a classic grid-iron pattern it is not only deserted but the expected boundary between suburb and centre doesn't exist, we just appear in the city centre. Managing not to see the 30 foot lizard painted on the wall we loop the centre and check-in 10 minutes before the office closes.
Helen wants to phone home using her credit card rather than the convenience of her or my mobile so [in looking for a suitable phone] we confirm that Invercargill is closed for Christmas. Instead [of eating out] we have poached eggs on toast and open a bottle of Esk Valley. I make the familial phone calls: mother and father are getting onto a bus in Germany; sister is getting some respite from the twins both of whom are doing fine despite their haemophilia and Pentalogy of Cantrell afflictions; brother, well, who knows if he's even alive?
For some reason I'm given to thinking of the peculiar Kiwi cultivation of the large hedge. Best seen from a distance, the large hedge is a monstrous affair, not less than 6m tall and 4m wide and 100m long it almost never surrounds a field. But once I saw it cover three sides and most commonly stands alone in the pastureland seemingly acting as a replacement for the usual 3-strand barbed wire fence. That's odd, let's be honest. Why would you replace a simple wire fence with an enormous monstrosity that you must waste half a day trimming every month? Which they do, as no hedge is unkempt.
That thought is interrupted by the parade of high revving cars outside winning over the completely absent audience. One car seems to have aparticularly good stereo blaring out the full range of pop classics: Starlight, If I Could Walk 500 Miles, Grease Lightning, ... The same people who are prone to taking their "pickup trucks on steoids" out to country lanes and dropping the clutch leaving waving lines of rubber along the road. I guess the modern generation has lost its elder's love of sheep.
Tautura Backpackers, Invercargill S46.41164 E168.34715 Elev. 149m.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.