Feb26 we drove from Queenstown to Te Anau, a little over two hours.
Lake Te Anau is at the edge of Fjordland, a huge, pristine national park covering the southwest corner of the South Island. We checked into a VRBO property for the first time on this trip. It was an older home, but we had lots of space and it came full of food and drinks. The fridge had champagne, beer, vodka cooler, etc. The pantry had all sorts of chips, cookies, coffees and teas. The note said to use whatever we wanted! 🙂
The next day we were up a 5:30am for our cruise on Doubtful Sound. We took a bus to Lake Manapouri, a ferry across the lake, and another bus to the Sound. (See the map at the beginning of this post.)
Lake Manapouri is interesting mostly for it’s enormous hydro power plant. Way back around 1900, it was realized that this was a great place to put a hydro plant because the large lake was nearly 200 meters above sea level, just 10 kilometers away in Doubtful Sound. But it was so remote that nothing happened until 1955 when the (then) world’s largest bauxite deposit was found in Australia. With enough electricity, bauxite can be turned into aluminum, so this was suddenly economically viable. Over the next 20 years, a 10 kilometer tunnel was bored from Deep Cove in Doubtful Sound, up to Lake Manapouri where the power station was built.
The model above shows the intakes at the top, the long blue ‘pen stocks’ where the water flows down to the seven turbines in the turbine hall (below). The winding yellow is the access tunnel for people and equipment to get from the surface, down to the turbine hall.
As you can imagine, this was a huge project and they did not get it right the first time. There was a significant miscalculation about the volume of water that would flow down the ‘tailrace’ tunnel. When it was finally switched on in 1972, the system significantly underperformed, generating only 600 megawatts vs the expected 700 mWatts. Still, it was enough for the aluminum plant, built in Invercargill, about 175 km to the south-east. It was not until 2007 that another bore was completed and the system could generate 850 megawats.
The road from Doubtful Sound to Lake Manapouri is the most expensive dirt road every built in NZ at about $2 per centimeter (in 1970’s NZD)!
Anyways, after a nice cruise across Lake Manapouri and then a lovely drive down the expensive road, we had a terrific cruise on the largest of all the NZ fjords, Doubtful Sound.
Doubtful Sound is a gem – deep, clear water, dolphins, seals, albatrosses, tall waterfalls and cliffs rising up out of the water. A calm, pristine oasis.
The next day, Bryan & I took a ferry across the lake for the Glow Worm Caves. Below are a couple photos I posted when we did this with Robby & Ryan.
The next day was a lovely drive back to Queenstown and hanging out there for the afternoon and evening. Which, of course, included going out for ice cream!
March2, all too early, it was time to say goodbye to Bryan. We all headed into QT airport where we met our friends Ray & Mary. After hugs all around, Bryan was heading back to SFO. We really enjoyed being able to share some of this lovely country with Bryan and will miss him.
Next time – wine tasting near QT and back to Fjordland!