Pining for the Fiords
Apr. 12th, 2024 02:48 amNew Zealand Travelog #13
Fiordlands National Park, NZ - Thu, 11 Apr 2024, 2pm
Our main event today has been a cruise of Doubtful Sound in Fiordlands National Park. Doubtful Sound is not actually a sound, it's a fiord. There's a technical definition that was lost on the famous explorer who discovered it and named it. But that's a story for another time. For now I want to share just a few simple pictures from the day's tour. And it does need to be just a few to stick to my goal of not falling hopeless behind in journaling this trip. My cameras tell me I have recorded over 500 photographs here today!

We boarded the first ship in the small town of Manapouri this morning at 7:20am, just as dawn was arriving. We'd been up for a few hours already. Well, I had. Not that dawn was much to look at, though, as today has been cloudy and rainy.
This first ship took us across Lake Manapouri. From there we transferred to a bus for the ride over Percy Pass.

Percy Pass is an incredibly rainy area. It's not just raining today, it rains 200+ days a year. And the pass averages more than 10 meters of rainfall annually. To put that in perspective, the city I live in averages less than 0.5 meter annually, and even the wettest parts of the SF Bay Area, the Santa Cruz Mountains and Mt. Tamalpais, average just under 1.5 meters.
With all that rain in the mountains you might imagine there'd be waterfalls. OMG, were there ever. Just on the 35~45 minute bus ride we saw more than a dozen waterfalls, ranging from a few meters high to easily more than 100 meters. Like I said above, I don't have time right now to share all the pictures. But to give you a sense of just how many waterfalls there are, here's a pic I snapped as we boarded the second boat, for a cruise through thesound fiord itself:

Yeah, there's, like, a dozen waterfalls just in that one photo. And if I'd captured a wider angle photo you'd see a dozen more astern of the ship. Once we set sail through thesound fiord we saw easily hundreds more waterfalls. And again, these weren't piddly-shit little 10' drops. Some of these were multi-tiered falls more than 1,000 meters tall.
"If there are hundreds of falls and some are over a kilometer tall, why isn't this place on page 1 of the world record books?" you might wonder. The answer is that lists of the highest falls only list year-round (or mostly-year-round) waterfalls. Out of the multiple hundreds of falls we saw today only, like, two are year-round. The rest appear when it rains and disappear shortly after the rain stops. So while the rain today made for crummy pictures, it made for amazing sights. When we could see them. 😂
Fiordlands National Park, NZ - Thu, 11 Apr 2024, 2pm
Our main event today has been a cruise of Doubtful Sound in Fiordlands National Park. Doubtful Sound is not actually a sound, it's a fiord. There's a technical definition that was lost on the famous explorer who discovered it and named it. But that's a story for another time. For now I want to share just a few simple pictures from the day's tour. And it does need to be just a few to stick to my goal of not falling hopeless behind in journaling this trip. My cameras tell me I have recorded over 500 photographs here today!

We boarded the first ship in the small town of Manapouri this morning at 7:20am, just as dawn was arriving. We'd been up for a few hours already. Well, I had. Not that dawn was much to look at, though, as today has been cloudy and rainy.
This first ship took us across Lake Manapouri. From there we transferred to a bus for the ride over Percy Pass.

Percy Pass is an incredibly rainy area. It's not just raining today, it rains 200+ days a year. And the pass averages more than 10 meters of rainfall annually. To put that in perspective, the city I live in averages less than 0.5 meter annually, and even the wettest parts of the SF Bay Area, the Santa Cruz Mountains and Mt. Tamalpais, average just under 1.5 meters.
With all that rain in the mountains you might imagine there'd be waterfalls. OMG, were there ever. Just on the 35~45 minute bus ride we saw more than a dozen waterfalls, ranging from a few meters high to easily more than 100 meters. Like I said above, I don't have time right now to share all the pictures. But to give you a sense of just how many waterfalls there are, here's a pic I snapped as we boarded the second boat, for a cruise through the

Yeah, there's, like, a dozen waterfalls just in that one photo. And if I'd captured a wider angle photo you'd see a dozen more astern of the ship. Once we set sail through the
"If there are hundreds of falls and some are over a kilometer tall, why isn't this place on page 1 of the world record books?" you might wonder. The answer is that lists of the highest falls only list year-round (or mostly-year-round) waterfalls. Out of the multiple hundreds of falls we saw today only, like, two are year-round. The rest appear when it rains and disappear shortly after the rain stops. So while the rain today made for crummy pictures, it made for amazing sights. When we could see them. 😂