No cycling

Today we set off for our overnight Doubtful Sound experience adn we were both really excited about it. Almost the best thing was that we were being picked up from Te Anau in a bus and driven to Manapouri for the first boat. Woo hoo! The bus wasn't like the super-modern "widges" we'd seen on the Milford Road but still, we were driven!

At Manapouri we boarded a small, fast boat to take us across Lake Manapouri ("the most beautiful lake in NZ"!) with a couple of detours into pretty coves. The lake was a very un-uniform shape and was surrounded by native tree covered hills. At Manapouri there is the West Arm underground power station that takes water from the lake to Doubtful Sound through a tunnel under the mountain. There were plenty of power lines coming out of the area but luckily were were moving on by coach over the Wilmot (like Gary) Pass (New Zealand's most expensive ($2 for each cm built) and steepest (1 in 5) tourist road). The road was unsealed and we were very glad we weren't cycling it. A Canadian guy we'd met said he cycled it with his mountain bike and trailer and had the worst day of his trip, temper tantrums kicking the trailer...the works.

The 20km journey took about half an hour with a photo stop at our first view of the beautiful Doubtful Sound. We were driven to our huge vessel for the night, the Navigator and allocated a four bed bunk room in the bowels of the ship. We were sharing with Jane from Harrogate and Sam from Chiswick who were both lovely. The boat was fantastic too, very plush and like a super hostel!

Our first activity was to eat a home baked muffin as the boat cruised along to Crooked Arm, a sheltered spot. Easy. Next was kayaking! We all got into single man kayaks for about an hour and saw dolphins (sadly in the distance and the opposite direction to that we were being to paddle in!) and a NZ fur seal really close. It was awesome, the only downside being the blood-hungry sandflies but if you stayed away from the shore you could avoid the worst of them. It was a great way to get chatting to our fellow passengers.

An even better ice-breaker was the next activity - swimming! Scott was first in, diving off the railing and then quite a few followed. The water was freezing but really clean and super refreshing! We stayed in for a few minutes before hot showers and our next activity - soup and a home-made roll. What a tough cruise so far...

The Navigator moved on the the mouth of the Sound and the Tasman Sea where we felt a bit of swell but it was mainly calm. We saw a seal colony on on some big rocks here and watched the sunset. Beautiful. Then it was dinner - all three courses of it! This was quite a tough activity but we rallied and managed to try everything!

After dinner we took our wine up to the top deck and watched the moon set and the stars come out. It was so quiet and there was absolutely no light pollution here. We also heard a kiwi! I recognised it from a visitor information centre where you could press a button to hear a kiwi noise (it was really loud and went on for ages so I hid and pretended it wasn't me who set off the annoying noise) .