16 January 2025

Dolphin photos courtesy of Pen

We were woken up at about 7.00am by “The Wellerman” sea shanty being played ever so quietly over the intercom.

As comfortable as the bed was, we both had a bad night’s sleep. In part it could have been that after all the king and decent-sized singles we’ve been sleeping in, this was narrow and quite high, and there was a fear of falling out. Plus, there was the continuous hum of the generator. This may have been lulling, if it didn’t drone at one pitch and then drop to a more comfortable pitch. I’d just be thinking, “ah, that’s nicer”, when it would increase the pitch again. They had supplied us with earplugs, which I should have used, but I kept thinking, “I’ll get used to it and fall asleep soon…”

Nope.

Plus, it was quite stuffy. We should have worked out how to open the porthole before it got dark.

Pen got up during the night and tried to see the stars, but didn’t get anything more exciting than a couple of satellites and a meteor.

One issue with the communal, unisex, ablutions block was that if you wanted to have a sponge bath, which I’d intended to, you were not only exposed to other users of the facilities, because there was no door to the room, you were exposed to anyone walking past. So, as I was already au fait with the setup, I had a shower, even though I hadn’t intended to.

I popped in to see the captain in the pilot house this morning and said that I wasn’t planning on having a shower, (until I had to warm up after the swim), and said I’d been concerned about water usage. He said, as he casually steered the ship with his feet, that they filled up the tanks from the waterfalls. (I’m wondering now if he was for real) And that they hold so many thousands of litres, the number of which went straight in one ear and out the other. And that they have good filtration systems.

For breakfast you had a choice of either continental or cooked. Cooked was bacon, hash brown, boiled egg, cooked tomato and I don’t know what else as I didn’t partake. The continental meal was a choice from a large variety of cereals (which were stored under the saloon’s seats), and fruits. I had Weet-bix, melon, grapes, kiwifruit, yoghurt, croissant, Vogels’ toast, peanut butter, apple juice, lemon and ginger tea. I was well fed.

And a couple of times whilst eating, I had to go outside to photograph the sunrise.

When I’d finally finished eating and photographing, I cleaned my teeth. I’d only just finished that when they started putting out pastries for morning tea.

We were not going to starve.

Instead, I went back outside to enjoy the view. Pleasingly, they shut down all the systems on the boat, including the generators and motor, and we just floated in the water, not photographing, just enjoying the silence. It was complete, aside from when people would move and their jackets would rustle. Or my Thunderbirds keyring that’s attached to my camera strap to use as a key so I can remove the strap from the camera, was clanking against the camera when I moved. I tucked it out of the way.

No photographs here, but we just managed to see a NZ Fur Seal in the distance. Gabe, who was our onboard natural expert, said it was probably a bachelor male who hadn’t had any luck with the ladies and was therefore hanging out in the fiords.

Apparently, you’d only have a day like this on Doubtful Sound about once every 200 days. So I think we missed the dramatic fiord, with the wild weather, choppy seas, and roaring waterfalls, but we got the placid millpond seas and stunning scenes.

Sadly, we were back in Deep Cove about 10ish. Then the crew offloaded all the dirty laundry. They’d asked us to consolidate our belongings this morning, so the crew could strip and change the beds whilst we were still on board. This meant that the laundry bags were hefted over the side and the rubbish taken off before we were allowed off. Then the crew had about one hour to get things shipshape before the next load of customers would be boarding.

It must be an interesting but draining job, having to be upbeat and personable for 22-23 hours, and then only having that short time to relax, but not relax because you’ve got to get everything shipshape again. The captain told me, as he sat back and steered the vessel with his feet, that they’re pretty much at work from 6.30am until 10pm, for two weeks. Then he gets a week off. He’s got three weeks off next break as he’s taking his week’s regular leave, plus two weeks annual leave.

We boarded our bus and this time we were with Yuka. She told us that she is the smallest driver in the fleet. Also, that she’d Japanese and her name meant good. Also, that her name wasn’t Yuki, which meant cold. We were sitting behind her and were able to reassure her that she wasn’t cold.

Once again, we saw a Weka crossing the road.

We had a short wait at Pearl Harbour, which was useful for a pitstop (I still don’t think anyone managed to get the sensor operated hand towels to work. I was waving everywhere around the unit and ended up having to wipe my hands on my slacks.)

This time we were on the other ferry as we crossed Lake Manapouri, and the mountains were in the main lovely and clear.

We got to the end, all piled off, and we said goodbye to each other and auf wiedersehen to the German couple.

Most of the others had their own transportation, but we had to wait for the 3.00pm bus. That was okay. We had yesterday’s sandwiches for lunch and then went for a walk up to an old church that is now a restaurant. There was a café/dairy next door, so I had an ice cream.

There was a nice little beech forested track that ran alongside the road and Pen stopped. “Is that a mushroom?”

I looked at the base of the trees she was pointing out. “Where?”

“There. It looks like it forms a half circle.”

Me (expecting to see something akin to a fairy ring on the ground): “I can’t see anything.”

Then I realised that she was talking about a couple of large bracket fungi that were on the trunk of a dead tree. So, after the ice cream, I checked it out.

When I got back to where Pen was working on her tablet and waiting for our bus to arrive, I did some typing of my blog. When it got to 2.30, I’d just packed up my laptop so I could go to the toilet before the hordes arrived, when the day trip cat returned. I still made it.

I think these are Black-Billed Gulls. Rarer than the endangered Red-Billed gulls that we tend to see around Thames and Auckland.

It turned out that we were travelling with Tony driving again. This time we scored the second row seats, but at least this bus was a high-decker, not a single level or double decker.

We got back to Te Anau and glanced at the service station over the road from where the bus let us off. The time was 3.03 pm and it was a very hot 32℃.

We traipsed up the hill and re-booked into the Fiordland Hotel. They’d given us a new room (226), which was one down and on the other side of the corridor from our room two days ago. She also discounted this rate, so we were charged what we were charged for the day before yesterday’s stay.

It was so hot and I was glowing so much after the walk wearing my camera bag/backpack, that I had a shower. Even though I hadn’t planned to.

Having dumped our gear, we went out again to book tomorrow’s takahē adventure, and get tea and breakfast. This evening, we had planned on having pizza on the foreshore, but it was a bit windy. Most of the establishments we tried were either $65 buffets, and we doubted we could eat $65 worth, or full for at least five minutes. So we went back to the Italian restaurant where we’d eaten the night before last and had a four cheese pizza, along with a very tasty salad that contained pear.

Because when you book accommodation or activities online, they want a credit card number, I’d been transferring $500 a week to my ANZ credit card this past month. But, as, when you come to pay for real there’s a surcharge on credit card payments, I’ve been using my Kiwibank debit card. But, because I haven’t wanted to risk using non-secure Wi-Fi to cancel the AP, and it was only tonight that I realised that you could use a secure browser if you went through my new anti-virus programme, I discovered that my spending account was getting a bit low. So, I sent ANZ a message to ask how I could transfer money from credit card to my Kiwibank account, and got a very prompt reply and an offer to do it for me.

This evening I should have been typing up today’s blog, but I was so tired I just surfed the net, recharged everything, including ourselves, and blogged.

Steps = 15,945

Kilometres = 11.0