Dec 30, 2011 - Kayaking Doubtful Sound
I'd be lying if I said this day didn't begin without a hitch. I literally awoke every 30 minutes over night because Tim had set his alarm on his ole reliable red slide phone which hadn't been used in years. Given this was our most expensive adventure, and it was for 2 full days, I was not going to miss this. Turns out, his alarm never goes off / randomly went back 2 hours, I awoke and checked my camera's time as I had been throughout the night, and asked a fellow hostel-mate what time it was, he confirmed the time to me, and it was "Oh Shit O'Clock." I sprung from my bed, Tim and I put all our crap in the hall way to pack our food up quickly, without making breakfast as planned, we were on our way outside to get picked up to go kayaking. Our bus was late, and I decided I would run to their tourism office and leave my stuff with Tim. I did, another person was there waiting for the bus as well, it shows up late, and we go back to pick up Tim and the fellow backpackers heading to Doubtful Sound for the day or the kayak adventure. A 20 minute coach bus ride to the tiny town of Manapouri and we were ready to embark on our journey to Doubtful Sound. The bus cleared off all the day trippers going on cruises on Doubtful Sound and left 8 of us on the bus, we all felt like the badasses of the group knowing that we would be carrying our housing, food, clothing, transportation (our kayaks), and gear for the next 2 days, roughing it, as opposed to a day cruise on a boat.
We loaded our gear onto the ferry that would take us ~20 miles across Lake Manapouri, another picturesque lake, however, it was overcast, and looked stormy exactly where Doubtful Sound was.
We disembarked by the largest electric plant in New Zealand on the west half of Lake Manapouri. 250' below ground, a pipe system carries water / electricity back to the other half other shore of the lake, I would quite like a tour of this, however, I'm much more eager to go to Doubtful Sound. A 20km bus ride later (these buses had to be taken on barge here, because there is no road to connect to Doubtful Sound - hence why its more remote and VERY VERY less touristy, and the reason we chose to go here vs. Milford Sound.
We were introduced to our 20' long, 2-person kayaks, loaded our gear into water proof bags, packed our tents, food, put on our wet suit bottoms and fleece tops (for wind, bugs, and sun protection) put on our kayak skirts and life jackets and lifted our (6 people to lift and carry) extremely heavy kayaks into the Sound. These sounds are direct inlets from the ocean, however, the top 3 to 30' of water is fresh water, due to the run off rain entering the sound from the never ending slopes above. Despite this pristine rain water, the Sound is dark in color due to tannin, which the rain water picks up from the trees on the canyon sides. This prevents much light from penetrating the water, and due to this, many species of plants and animals that are usually found at more than 200' deep in the ocean, can be found at a very reasonable scuba dive depth of 30' to 60'. Doubtful Sound is 3x as long and has 10x as much surface area as Milford Sound, a much more vast inlet, yet still gorgeous. It also has a family of dolphins that lives in the sound that we were hoping to encounter.
As we paddled out into the main arm, we began passing several water falls.
This first one at the time seemed incredible, and by all means, it still is, but little did we know about the number of massive water falls we would see in the next 36 hours. We paddled against the wind, into a side wind, and downwind, it seemed to be constantly changing. The view, although constantly changing due to the progress we were making stayed incredible the entire time.
We stopped at a rock beach after a few hours of paddling, ate lunch, and our guide (he was 21 and the youngest of our group of 8 by far) brewed coffee, and we continued on. We filled up our water bottles at any water falls on the side and I was drinking it like I'd never seen water before, to which, the group gave me grief for the shear volume of water I was able to drink.
Our guide filling up his water bottle in the mini waterfall:
At this point, our guide points to the upcoming canyon ahead and explains why there are so many sections of downed trees.
He explained this phenomenon as a 'tree fall.' Essentially, the slopes are so steep and there is so little soil that any little nook in the mountain side, the trees put their roots into, and then as it stabilitizes, other trees rap their roots around other trees' roots. When one of the trees at the top falls, and loses hold of its nook, a chain reaction occurs and all of the trees tumble down the mountain side.
We kayaked on to the end of Hall Arm, saw a giant crack in the mountain side caused by an earthquake in the 1950s (very new in geological time)
parked our boats and went for a hike up to a waterfall. We hiked up a stream to get there, and on the way, I almost stepped on this:
But I caught myself. This is one of the many non-native animals brought to New Zealand. At first it was rabbits as pets which do as rabbits do...and multiply like rabbits. Next, the Europeans brought these weasels and their cousins to control the rabbit population because they were eating many of the Kiwi's crops.
Anyway, we trekked on up to the water fall and we were blessed with the opportunity to stand in a water fall with the water from above pounded us on our shoulders, the whole time, I was worrying that the falls would be transporting a large rock or tree branch (given that everything at the bottom of the falls road the water down to this location on the canyon side, this is very plausible), but luckily we were safe, and enjoyed the serenity of the Sound.
We began to entertain ourselves throwing rocks down at a boulder half way down the stream attempting to be the first to hit it, but it was much harder than it appeared, either way, it was a fun little break from the day.
Other notes:
* One 60' boat came into Hall Arm while we were there, and we attempted to kayak/surf its waves towards the shore.
* Everytime our guide wanted to speak with us, we'd "raft up" - all 4 kayaks side by side, and then "break away" by everyone pushing on everyone else's kayak at the same time, and we continued to improve throughout the trip.
After leaving the walls, we headed back in the direction we came from, and to our camp site of the night. My arms were definitely exhausted from kayaking for ~6 to 7 hrs.
Where we kayaked into to park our boats:
We pulled our kayaks ashore, and as a team of 6, and we met our arch enemy. Sand flies. These minute, mosquito-esque insects, are my single least favorite animal on the planet. They swarm you by the hundreds and bite at any bit of skin available. I have never been so flustered, annoyed, or driven crazy by anything in my entire life as these little buggers. I would've spent $100s on a can of deet to get away from them. Luckily, we had some, and lathered up our arms, masking our scent and it did wonders! Tim and I set up our tent, on a gloriously comfortable gravel filled area while battling the sand flies, toured our camping area, and made our way to the 'main tent.'
Prior however, we got to see where the other tents were set up, there was an elevated toilet about 100m behind our campsite and other than the obvious lack of comfort (we're camping in the wilderness) it was such a cool experience! Literally, no other humans but us for about 50 miles, just vast vast New Zealand Fiordland Wilderness!
I changed on a mini island in the river bend as the sun was setting and being away from the sand flies has never been so rewarding. We spent the rest of the night in the tent that is set up by our guides company, drank boxed wine, cooked our pasta on our propane burner, shared stories, and eventually headed for our tents. Prior, we ventured towards where we disembarked from our boats, and the tide had lowered so much that we could walk out another 150' from where our kayaks were. It was cool seeing everything that is typically hidden by the Sound. Hall Arm was entirely still and the peacefulness was incomparable to anything else I've experienced.
On the way back to the tents, we stopped for some bird calls, as we tried to contact the elusive national bird, the kiwi. Although we heard them in the distance, they never believed that our bird calls truly were other kiwis, and as we crawled into our tents, inflated our 1/2" thick, 2'x4' mattress pad, the sounds of the wilderness, the insects in the trees, and the chirping of the birds guided us to sleep.
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