If you have ever thought of travelling to New Zealand, Milford Sound is definitely on your 10 top to go list. Over one million tourists visited Milford Sound in 2019 right before the pandemic hit the world and its natural beauty should not be missed.
But Milford Sound is not the only stunningly beautiful fjord in the area. In this post, we’d like to take you to a less known hidden gem of Fjordland national park in Southern parts of New Zealand South Island, known as Doubtful Sound or “Sound of Silence”.
Generally, a fjord is a long, deep, narrow body of water that reaches far inland. Fjords are often set in an interestingly shaped valleys with steep walls of rock on either side. Fjords are found mainly in Norway, Chile, New Zealand, Canada, Greenland, and the U.S. state of Alaska. In New Zealand, these fjords are called sounds and majority of them can be found on the western south of New Zealand. And apart from the Milford sound, none of them are accessible by road.
Ok Let’s get into it and continue the South Island trip where I stopped here few months ago.
After a short visit to Wanaka and camping on a nice free camp spot on the way to Queenstown, we left early in the morning toward Te Anau.
Nestled on the edge of a peaceful lake, Te Anau is usually considered as a last stop to fill up the car, eat or sleep on the way to Milford sound or back. It’s a lovely small town and definitely worth a stop for a night or two to enjoy the bike rides or hiking tracks like Kepler but normally visitors just rush trough it to get to Milford sound and back.
The plan was buying tickets for the Doubtful sound for the i-site in the Te Anau before looking for a camp site for the night.
We were the only visitors at i-site and they were about to close at 5 pm. South Island tourism definitely hit the most by the pandemic. From the size of the i-site building it was obvious that in the peak season of the any year apart from 2020, it was packed with tourists flooding in and out. We managed to get two cruise tickets for the Doubtful sound cruise for the next morning and two tickets for the Milford sound tour for the day after that.
After checking few camp sites at Te Anau, we decided to head to Manapouri and try our luck there and we are super glad that we did.
Located right at the edge of the Manapouri lake, Possum lodge is a perfect place to stay. We used one of their powered sites for parking our campervan as we were planning to stay in the area for two days but they have rooms available as well. The best part about this camping site is the convenient walk through the woods to the Doubtful Sound tour starting point. It can be a base camp for lots of activities in the area. The local pub and restaurant is few minutes walks away as well!
The next morning, we woke up early to have a hearty breakfast and pack ourselves some lunch and snack for the day. The tour takes almost a whole day and only tea and coffee is served on board. Ah by the way don’t forget the repellent as sandflies are not something to mess around with in South island!
Soon after we got to the port, we got on board on the first boat and headed to the other side of the lake Manaouri. With no road access to the Doubtful sound, the only way to get there is by getting on the boat to get to the other side of the lake Manapouri first.
Apart from Doubtful sound tour, it is also possible to just book a tour to get to the other side of the lake Manapouri to visit Manapouri Hydro Power Station at Manapouri west arm. This power station is an amazing destination as it is.
The original construction of the Manapōuri hydro station was a huge engineering achievement. The project took 1,800 workers eight years from start to completion in extremely harsh conditions. The project involved constructing the power station 200 metres below a granite mountain in an underground cavern. The construction started at 1964 and the power station was fully functional at 1972. The Manapōuri project is regarded as the birthplace of New Zealand’s environmental consciousness as lots of New Zealanders protested against raising the lake level which was part of the initial plan and could damage or even destroy the fragile ancient forests of the the area and finally the plant got operational without raising the lake water levels. Seeing this power station and knowing about it was truly one of the highlights of this trip, especially for me with more than 8 years of my career being involved in power plant design and commissioning.
Ok I’ll stop talking about the power station but honestly if you are planning to go there, have a look at this power plant concept before getting there, it makes it even more fun.
After getting off the boat at Manapouri West arm, we waited for few minutes to be picked up for the second leg of the journey at West arm visitor center. It was pretty busy as the group of visitors that were staying at Doubtful sound overnight cruise the night before, were trying to get on the same boat that we got off from to get back to Manapouri and suitcases and people were flooding in as we were walking out.
It also started to rain as we were waiting to get on the bus which is not a surprise in Fjordland. With an average of about 7 metres of rain falls per year, over an average of about 200 rain-days per year, it’s almost impossible to visit the area on a sunny day. But honestly we didn’t like to visit the area on a sunny day, we loved to get through the dense ancient forests with giant trees covered with moss and high waterfalls in a misty foggy day.
The half an hour bus ride from the Manapouri west arm visitor center to the Doubtful Sound is possible thanks to the road that has been built in early 1960s to deliver the giant turbines and generators to the the power station. All the big equipment were delivered by ship to the doubtful sound harbour and they had to construct a road thorough dense ancient forest to reach the power station location, one of the most expensive construction projects in New Zealand history for its time.
Thanks to the power station construction, accessing to the Doubtful sound made possible today. The bus ride was fun and enjoyable, thanks to the amazing bus driver/ tour guide who made us laugh all the way and also the breathtaking and untouched scenery along the way.
We got on board of the second boat at around 11:00 am to spend few hours on this amazing fjord. We loved it as soon as we have a first glimpse of it. It had a surreal sense of calmness and tranquility which is hard to explain especially with a big sailing boat on the horizon and the low clouds which made it even more surreal.
Probably one of the most significant reasons that the whole tour was calming and enjoyable was the number of people that were on board for this trip. On such a big boat, it was perhaps only 10 to 15 people and most of them were staying inside and enjoying the view from the big glass windows of the cabin without getting wet and cold outside. The Doubtful sound part of the tour took almost 3 hours and we enjoyed every second of it. Based on the the weather condition they move to different water ways so the path is not fixed.
Along the way we’ve seen small islands in the middle of the water way, lots and lots of water falls, amazing birds and also seals. There’s is a good chance of seeing dolphins but we haven’t seen any.
Throughout the whole trip, I couldn’t help myself to not think about the early explorers who found New Zealand and sailed around it and managed to sail through narrow waterways, witnessed its glory at its best, packed with wild life and name all these waterways and tiny islands with their loved ones.
After spending the whole afternoon on Doubtful sound, 3 boat ride and two bus ride, we got back to our campsite fully satisfied.
Doubtful Sound tour is much more expensive that the typical 2 hour Milford Sound cruise trip but it definitely worth it. Even though it sounds like the Doubtful sound and the Milford Sound are probably much similar, but I won’t suggest compromising and removing one of them from your list. Of course if you are not tight on money and time.
In the next post, we’ll go through our trip to Milford Sound and I’ll try to compare these two experiences to make it easier to make a call on which one to choose if you have too.
Pin for later:
