Tour books say check out Hayes Lake so we swing by enroute to Arrowtown. There is sculling practice happening and we spy a very cute Coot, then off we go to explore an historic Chinese settlement where they tell the story of gold miners from China and their roll in the NZ history. Once we get our history fix, we stroll the main street and find some pretty good pizza with eggplant, fresh basil, mozzarella, and Spec and I another of those Cloudy Apple Ciders. We are really very full but as we head back to the van I can’t pass up the ice cream. They have the one flavor claimed to be quintessential NZ, Hokey Pokey. It is vanilla ice cream with crunchy bits of honey comb. We share a scoop made by a local creamery, Deep South. Delicious.

We just blasted through town yesterday heading out to camp for the night. Traffic in town was awful – turns out the NZ Open is here this weekend. Ack! We decide we shouldn’t completely skip town and Sunday morning might be a little quieter so we run in for a few hours and check it out this morning. First stop “Cookie Time” home of the Cookie Muncher who looks much like a red Cookie Monster. Kent orders “best of both worlds” a scoop of ice cream of his choice plus a scoop of cookie dough of his choice. He is in seventh heaven with a dish of salted caramel ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. I sampled, it is pretty spectacular. I go for a couple warm from the oven cookies, white chocolate macadamia and chocolate chip. Very well done, Cookie Time. I must admit that I wasn’t overly impressed with their packaged cookies from the grocery store but fresh from the shop I don’t know if I have had any better – other than homemade of course.
We stroll to the water front and in just a few blocks I find Patagonia Chocolates – one of those must try places but we keep it light, one afghan cookie which is claimed to be a NZ favorite. It is a crunchie chocolate cookie with choc icing and walnuts. Ok, now I have tried it but for me it is nothing to write home about.
Got my souvenir fix, T shirts. We pick up a few groceries – Otago Pinot Noir, pinot gris, a local Whittaker milk chocolate bar, and bread. You know, the essentials.

Today is jetboat day on the glacially fed Dart River. The total trip actually involves a bus ride including time on the gravel bars of the braided Dart River (more on that later), a bit of a bush walk through dense forest of the Aspiring National Park, then a jetboat ride on the Dart. We are traveling with Dart Boat Adventures.
Kent and I caught a shuttle from camp, 12 mile delta just outside of Queenstown, to Glenorchy for the start of our adventure. We get tickets and spray jackets and climb on board this odd-looking bus. It sets high with steep steps and is very boxy looking. It is comfy inside and off we go
The ride out is filled with trivia about the history of this area and a bit about the geology. We enter Mt. Aspiring National Park through what sort of feels like the back door since it involves driving up river on gravel bars of the actual river bed. Pretty cool. Our bush walk gets an inauspicious start as the guide lets us know that there is free sand fly repellant available for the taking at the trail head. Hmmm. We did take some. The coolest thing, the Lance tree. It has evolved to actually change the texture of its leaves as it gets taller. When small, leaves are sparse and tough and pointy but once full grown and out of reach of ground birds it gets fuller and the leaves more pliable and soft. We see a lot of huge red and black beech trees (not much like beech trees we know from the US). Some are said to be 500 to 900 years old. We come across an oversized chair out among the trees. The claim is that it is a prop from The Hobbit. No telling, but we posed in it anyway.

Just a quick bus ride from the walk to the gravel bar the jetboats are loading on today. The river changes every day or even during a day so the loading site is different all the time. Our driver makes a route adjustment and quick as that, the wheels spin (all six of them) and we sink frame deep in the loose gravel so deep that the doors won’t clear to open. There is some head scratching, some pacing and a call for help, by radio of course since we are in the middle of nowhere. Boat drivers come to our aide and together manage to dig out enough gravel by the door that we can squeeze out. Just a little added excitement then a short walk down river to the boats. Ok, we are back on track and on board.
The ride is thrilling. Views are spectacular. The spray nearly freezing against the face. We make it nearly to the start of the river to an area where the waters are so rough and fast that slides and gravel rearrangement make further passage impossible. Downriver is great fun too as the driver throws in just enough spins and obstacle dodging to make it exciting. Oh yes, do it if you get a chance!
We have a little time in Glenorchy awaiting our bus ride back to camp. The excitement of the ride worked up an appetite. A bowl of fries and Mac’s Muddy Apple Cider hit the spot.

Initial planning had us spending several days here at the gate to Milford Sound but the road is still washed out with access only for tour bus caravans, no private vehicles. Milford Sound will have to wait for some other trip….We will just make it a day trip this time.
The Te Anau Bird Sanctuary is a fun stop. We get to see some very rare and difficult to spot in the wild critters. The Ruru owl, she is quietly perched and hard to find even in an enclosure. Bright green Antipodes Island parakeets are easy to spot but don’t sit still for long. Neary every species of bird I have seen in the wild seems to be black and white! The Kaka Parrots climb about and chew on everything. Grey ducks, they look a lot like mallards and unfortunately cross breed with introduced mallards, so the true grey duck species is rapidly declining. Takahe, a very rare and endangered ground bird. This pair fosters birds to be released into the wild in areas that have been cleared of predators. It is great to see animals we will likely miss out on in the wild. It is also a bit sad to know that no matter the country, man manages to mess us the natural balance and endanger dozens, even hundreds of species. Here in New Zealand the biggest blunder made by very early settlers seems to have been the introduction of the fluffy, adorable, tasty rabbit. It seems harmless enough but set in motion a whole series of increasingly unwise events. The rabbits being rabbits in a place of nearly limitless food multiplied to the point of nuisance. Ferrets were introduced to eat the rabbits. Ferret populations take off. More predators and the saga continues. Ultimately resident native birds, many ground dwellers and ground nesters, fall victim to the introduced predators and have paid the price for man’s experimentation. NZ is fighting hard to correct that. There are traps everywhere; many tended by citizen scientists and environmentalists. It is a mighty effort with mixed returns. Best success seems to be clearing remote islands of pests then moving endangered species to those protected enclaves. Not exactly restoring what has been damaged but at least saving some species.

The Kepler Track circles the mountainside above Manapouri Lake and is a perfect place for us to spend at least a bit of time on one of the famed Great walks. The full journey is 3 or 4 days walk with overnights in huts or campsites along the way. We settle for a day hike a little over 4 miles out to the first hut on Shallow Bay. It is a great start on a swinging bridge over the Waiau River. Switch backs carry us up into the lush forest where footfall sound alternately a hollow echo or no sound at all as we move across soil built of sphagnum moss and ages of fallen vegetation. Another suspension bridge, a balance testing log crossing over bog, a boardwalk view of a quiet bog-land pool, the beach front on the north end of lake Manapouri. It is a nice walk with very light traffic at first, growing a bit as we go into early afternoon. The Hut at Shallow Bay is decidedly unimpressive. Check out the pics. Still, probably a pleasant sight if you’d been walking all day with a heavy pack in foul weather. We head back to our cozy little campervan.

We have breakfast under overcast skies that soon degrade into a steady drizzle. We are holding our breath that things will clear off since we head out for a cruise on Doubtful Sound at 1:30PM. We hang out in the campers’ lounge to charge electronics and spend some time catching up the blog. We get a great surprise, a video call from Mike and Willa!
By noon we see patches of blue sky and a very warm sun is peeking through. Yeah! We pack lunch and after a short walk to the dock are anxiously waiting to board for the first of three boat rides today. There is no road access from this side of the lake to Doubtful Sound. Our trip entails a boat shuttle across the lake, a bus ride over Wilmot Pass then the actual boat tour of the Sound. Then we retrace our steps across the pass and lake Manapouri. It is a bit convoluted but each leg is cool in its own way.
We don’t have rain but we do have wind. Our various captains talk of 40 km/hr head winds as we sail west. There is pretty heavy chop on the open water of Lake Manaporu. Of course, we have to ride on the open deck. When combined with our forward speed the wind practically blows us over. It is about an hour ride but the view is great and we get a little lesson on hydropower production in the area. The bus ride is ok too. Early morning rain has brought to life many waterfalls along the route and it is a chance to get a close up look at the vegetation on these rainy, rainy mountainsides. They get 8 to 10 meters of rain a year on the west flanks of this range. With that much water there is moss on everything and trees grow on rock faces with virtually no topsoil. It is soooo green.
Doubtful Sound, it is impossible to grasp the scale of this place. Water to a depth of 430 meters filling a broad U-shaped valley 2 km wide in places. The main channel is joined by 5 arms each carved by adjoining glaciers. We motor our way out toward sea buffeted by winds and bounced on chop sometimes rolled on up to 8-foot swells. It is like a cork bobbing in a bath tub. Shear rock walls rise almost vertically on either side. Trees blanket surfaces where it seems impossible that they could find purchase. Moss blankets pretty much every surface. Streaks of grey-brown slice the lush growth where tree slides have scrubbed the landscape back to bare stone. Waterfalls cascade everywhere sometimes flooding across the cliff faces and others freefalling from a precipice. Wind pushes the spray in huge arcs. Awesome.
Wind and rough water make wildlife sightings difficult. We do get a couple great looks at the resident pod of bottlenose dolphin as the play about our wake. A colony of eared seals breed at the entrance of the Sound. They are basking in the sun and the pups romping about. A couple Albatross check out or wake. There are gulls of course. Not a bad showing overall.
It has been a beautiful day and a great expedition. I highly recommend it.

In just a few miles the jagged peaks of the Southern Alps appear as a backdrop to the rolling green hills we have seen the past few days. We are entering the country of vast mountain lakes, Hauroko, Monowai, Manapouri (our destination for today), and Te Anau and rivers that direct the huge mountain rains out to sea. Most if not all have been harnessed to some degree for power generation but still seem wonderfully wild.
Like our redwoods, NZ has a gigantic native tree, the Totara. They are fighting to protect the few remaining stands of virgin timber that contain them. We have to check out the reserve and big Totora Walk so Kent takes on an 18 km narrow and getting narrower gravel road that includes a wait for cattle to cross and a bunch of one lane bridges. Much like the redwoods, the giant trees are awesome and one has to be grateful that somebody had the fore-thought to protect at least some of them.
We come across a manmade wonder, the Clifden suspension bridge. The span was built 1899 and still stands. It carries foot and bicycle traffic now instead of heavy loads of livestock, lumber, and wool but still impressive.
Home sweet home for the night The Possum Lodge. Eclectic and friendly. Gotta love it.

We start with beachside breakfast along Colac Bay; coffee and blueberry-white chocolate scones. It is yummy but anything tastes good with a view like this. For those considering passing through here, the freedom camping here by the boat ramp looks pretty nice. You’ll likely have a bit of company but its level, has a nice restroom, and a great ocean view. That’s at least two attributes better than the Tavern Holiday park!
It is low tide so we check out Monkey Island. A giant bolder sits some 100 meters out the beach. Since the tide is out we stroll the soft sand – bare feet would feel nice – then clamber across smaller boulders – boots were a good choice – to reach narrow concrete steps that take us to a platform atop the boulder, Monkey Island. Another spectacular view is made perfect as the only sounds to be heard are the crash of waves and the call of oyster catchers. Shell fish hunting looks to be pretty good and it is fun to watch how the birds work their way into each of the different types of mollasks.
Our last look seaward, at least for now, is at McCracken Rest. The waves break across a number of tiny islands that Maori legend claims are the broken teeth of a giant whale that chewed the strait between mainland and Steward island. Scientist explanation is once again less colorful, the islands are erosion resistant remnants of a long-ago volcanic rim.

At Waipapa Point we find a half dozen seals sunning and bathing in the sand. Mostly they look like brown rocks. There is an occasional burst of energy in the name of territorial disputes. It requires some patience but they are fun to watch. We check out “The end of the Road” in Bluff just south of Invercargill then make our way to The Tavern and Holiday Park in Colac Bay for night six. About what you would expect….