LAKE MANAPOURI JUST GOT SMALLER
BY KEITH INGRAM F
iordland National Park is one of New Zealand's iconic wilderness areas, and the award-winning tourism company Real Journeys operates some of our top excursions into Doubtful Sound.
The company is determined to keep its reputation for premium quality delivery by embarking on a $10 million investment upgrading all of its vessels and coaches, including a focus on the Doubtful Sound excursions. To get to Doubtful Sound you must go by sea, drop in by helicopter or take the laborious tourist route by launch across Lake Manapouri, and a coach across the Main Divide of the Southern Alps via Wilmot Pass, before dropping into the sound.
Visitors also have the chance to look around the huge Manapouri hydro-electric power station, blasted out of solid granite 200m underneath the lake, before crossing the pass and cruising around the sounds.
Being at the heart of the national park, a World Heritage area, the appeal of Doubtful Sound lies not only in its beauty and rare wildlife, but also in its utter remoteness.
"This means visitors spend a fair bit of time getting to the fiord itself, so we wanted that part of their experience to be just as memorable, comfortable and top-of-the-line as the Doubtful Sound cruise," said Real Journeys' chief executive officer, Dave Hawkey.
On their arrival at the fiord, passengers may embark on the Patea Explorer for their three-hour day cruise and then face the return journey home. So it was important that the service offered a seamless and professional experience from pickup in Queenstown to the scenic cruise in Doubtful Sound and back again. A significant investment has been undertaken in advanced new coaches, but the journey across Lake Manapouri was the weak link in the chain.
The pilot station is fully equipped 10 Professional Skipper March/April 2012
The three vessels currently operating on Lake Manapouri are all advanced in years. The two Fiordlander class vessels (Z-Boats) were built in the late sixties and early seventies and the catamaran was built in the eighties. The new boat, MV Titiroa, compliments, rather than replaces, the existing fleet. As the largest vessel on the lake, she reduces the number of vessels travelling across the lake during the peak season of mid-summer. The 24m catamaran is the result of five
