lake manapouri and the kepler range

luckily with a blog i can tell exactly where i left off! my main reason for the visit to te anau was to do a tour/boat cruise of the doubtful sound. most people head to fiordland national park via te anau to hike one of the tracks and/or do a cruise of the milford sound... i chose to do the doubtful sound cruise because the fiord is bigger, they only let 1 day boat and 1 overnight boat in (which makes it much more intimate - if you can be intimate with 90 other people on the boat) and as cammy from california is coming to visit we will likely do milford then. as luck would have it the road to milford was actually closed due to weather and too much snow so they were delaying any with a milford sound booking anyway.

on monday morning the bus picked me up from the backpackers in te anau and we drove 30 minutes southwest towards lake manapouri where we boarded a small boat to cross over into the park. the ride across lake manapouri was gorgeous as we were surrounded by snow capped mountains (the kepler range) and the clouds provided some great dramatic scenery. the ride across was just shy of an hour and i spent most of the trip chatting with the captain and standing up on the deck until it got too wet.