Doubtfully Yours

Aaaaand I'm back. I just finished up a 3-day Doubtful Sound kayak trip in Fiordland National Park, which was an awesome experience. Kayaking is a great way be a part of the fiords for a bit, as it gets you away from the terrestrial crowds and allows you to cruise along in relative silence. Doubtful Sound is especially peaceful, simply by virtue of its inaccessibility: to get to the beach where we were to put our kayaks in, we had to take a 45 minute boat ride across Lake Manapouri, transfer our gear to a van/trailer, and take a 30 minute drive over a mountain pass on a dirt road to Deep Cove. There are no direct roads from civilization to Doubtful Sound...you always have to take a boat at some point.

Anyways, on to the actual trip. Let's start out with the crew. We were a motley bunch, to say the least. First of all, there were eight of us (seven not counting Adrian, our Kiwi guide), and six of us were Americans! This is the first time that this has happened to me in NZ...usually Americans seem pretty scarce. Because four of the Americans were all friends, the team became loosely split into two (friendly) "factions:" the four American buddies and, well, everybody else. Now, I don't usually like to pass judgment or make sweeping generalizations about people I hardly know, but I think that something needs to be said about the American friends: they were all huge nerds. There was Alfred the computer programmer (yes, I know I am a computer programmer, too, but this guy was a STEREOTYPICAL computer programmer), his wife, Claudia the librarian, Jonathan the finance manager, and Dan the accountant. A computer geek, a librarian, a finance manager, and a bean-counter...Jesus tapdancing Christ, that's like a laundry list of the world's most boring professions. Anyways, in the other faction there was me, Adrian, Will (who "breaks" horses for the US Forest Service in Wyoming), and Lee, a graphic designer from Manchester, England, described by Adrian as "quite a cheeky pom." Although the nerds kept pretty quiet during most of the trip (stunted social skills?) the rest of us were able to entertain ourselves quite well. Lee had made an observation that characters in American movies say "goddammit" a lot (apparently quite a bit moreso than in England), so we had a running joke of shouting, "goddammit!" in an exaggerated John Wayne accent whenever the opportunity presented itself. Got bit by a sandfly? "Goddammit!" Morning coffee too weak? "Goddammit!" You get the picture.

Things were looking pretty rough when we met at HQ at 6 AM on Thursday...it had been pouring all night, and we were getting reports that the sound was looking pretty rough. But we pressed on anyways. When we got to Deep Cove, the water was covered in whitecaps and it was raining like crazy. Supposedly there was going to be a southwesterly change that would bring better weather, so it turned into a waiting game. We hung out inside a government-owned hostel used by NZ schoolkids, had lunch, and twiddled our thumbs. After about 5 hours things finally started to clear and we jumped at the chance to get going. Although it was still cloudy and drizzly, we were very fortunate to be kayaking at that moment, because the deluge had generated a TON of temporary waterfalls and cascades. It was unbelievable...everywhere you turned you were greeted by at least one spectacular waterfall, some starting from over 1000 meters above sea level. Later that day we set up an improvised campsite at the spot where the two-day kayak trippers normally spend the night. We had a rain and insect shelter for cooking and socializing, and Macpac tents for sleeping. After a potent dinner of ramen noodles with beans, tuna, and powdered soup mix, I fell asleep to the sound of waterfalls in the distance.

The weather on the second day was a lot better. We did a strenuous 23 km paddle to a campsite on Crooked Arm. A lot of the previous day's waterfalls had disappeared, but the break in the weather allowed us to take in views of the steep fiord walls and mountains in the distance. The highlight of the day was running into a pod of about 15 bottlenose dolphins. Apparently they like to fish and rear their young in the sounds, and we were able to see them up close as they surfaced. Really cool.

Although we were all enjoying ourselves, by the third day we were all eager to get back to the comforts of civilzation. We started paddling back to Deep cove, and about halfway a long a pretty good tailwind picked up. So Adrian suggested that we sail for a bit. It's hard to explain how this works, but basically all the kayaks "raft" together, and the paddlers in front grab the bottom of the sail while the rear paddlers hoist the top of the sail up on their paddles. Long story short, we enjoyed a leisurely, wind-powered cruise most of the way back to Deep Cove. It was a nice way to end the trip.

It just happened that the last day of the trip was also Lee's birthday, so we all met at a restaurant called Bailez later that night. We all dug into satisfying, meaty fare (mostly burgers and steaks), and Lee, Will and I went out for beers afterwards. We ended up closing down a local bar called The Moose, which was an interesting experience, to say the least. The place was filled with Te Anau locals, most of them thoroughly drunk and dancing (convulsing, rather) to tunes provided by a crappy local cover band called "Charma." (What kind of weak-ass name is "Charma?" Apparently these guys did not go to the SmackDab School of Band-Naming). Anyways, we were trying to finish up a game of pool when we got shouted down by one of the bartenders for holding things up and keeping the bar from closing. I was ready to turn tail and go, but Lee was having none of it. In his own special Manchester style, he "cheekily" rebuked the bartender for her attitude and language (which was colorful). I thought there might be a "scrap" if thing got any more out of hand, but thankfully we were all able to escape unscathed.

Anyways, since my arms and shoulders got such a good workout from kayaking, I've decided to turn it into a total-body workout by starting the Kepler Track tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have the chance to post some photos once I get back from that. Adios!