Manapouri - Te Anau - Milford Sound

Manapouri should only be a stopover on the quite long journey from Queenstown to Te Anau, and there isn't really much to see in the town. But there was a cable car that felt like it moved really slowly, yet it did throw you quite high at the end. It was really fun riding it!

From Te Anau, I took a scenic flight over the Dusky and Doubtful Sounds in Fiordland National Park. Both Dusky and Doubtful, as well as the famous Milford Sound, are geographically not sounds, meaning river valleys flooded by the sea, but fjords, which are glacial valleys.

The Dusky and Doubtful Sounds can only be reached by scenic flight or boat tour. Aside from a single cabin in Doubtful Sound, a crayfish station, and a power station, there is no civilization, no roads, and no hiking trails there. The crayfish station is reached by helicopter, and the crayfish can already be on someone's plate in China within 48 hours of being picked up. Incredible!

We were traveling with a seaplane and made a water landing in Dusky Sound. We saw dolphins from a distance and went to them after the pilot showed us the spot where Captain James Cook first set foot as a European in 1770. We were lucky because the bottlenose dolphins were eager to play with us and swam around the plane for quite a while. The pilot was a bit on edge and kept saying we should take off before the dolphins started jumping (if one had landed on the plane, we would have probably had a problem). And just at the moment we took off, several dolphins actually leapt out of the water. That was so cool!

From above, we could also see numerous glacial lakes on the mountains that usually create huge waterfalls. Apparently, it hadn't rained for weeks, so unfortunately, there was no sign of any waterfalls.

There is a spur road leading into Milford Sound, from which various hikes, such as the Great Walks 'Milford Track' and 'Routeburn Track,' branch off. I took a hike to Lake Marion, a glacial lake, during the journey. It was a nice hike, and after reaching the top sweaty, I took a dip in the rather cold glacial lake, which was very refreshing. On the way back, I passed mountains and waterfalls and had to drive through a rather fragile-looking tunnel. The scenery was indeed impressive, but I couldn't fully grasp the admiration I had perceived so far when the topic of Milford Sound came up.