What time is it there?!

We’ve arrived in New Zealand’s land of BIG scenery. One of the first things they tell you here is that Captain Cook got it wrong when he was naming things, the local landscape was carved by ice, and so these are not Sounds at all, they’re Fjords. Well whatever you want to call them they’re still every bit as spectacular as you expect.

Doubtful Sound is probably less well known than Milford Sound up the road, which reminds me of the relationship between Sequoia and Yosemite parks in the USA. Doubtful Sound is the ‘Sequoia’ of the pair; it may not have the iconic landmarks that you’ve already seen in a thousand photos, but it still has beautiful scenery and because there are far fewer people there it is much more peaceful. We were the only boat on the sound and at one point they stopped, told everyone to sit down quietly, and switched off the engines and generators for a few minutes. You can’t get that experience at Milford because you are on just one of a procession of boats. Oh, and they don’t make you pose for the cheesy tourist photo when you board the boat either!

Our trigger happy approach to photography shows no sign of letting up, and we probably already have fifty or so shots to sort through before we encounter the pod of dolphins halfway towards the sea. Although we’ve seen quite a few dolphins now we’ve never seen this many together, there are believed to be around 60 in this group and it seems that most of them came out to see us today. By the time the day is over we’ve got something like 200 pictures to sort through in an attempt to produce a sensible amount to upload. Hopefully we will succeed and you won’t find them too repetitive to look at.....see how we did, here!