New zealand is one of those places where a geography can get excited every step of the way, why i choose new zealand....to fulfil those dreams of seeing what we learnt about in geography classes at school.

I spent 3 hours out on a real journeys cruise around doubtful sound. Its one of the most spectacular areas ive seen yet, ii must of only spent about 25minutes out of 3 hours inside the boat the rest on the outside of the boat, it was something i could look at and look at and look at without getting bored. It was was something amazing to see, within the first few minutes i was smiling as we left deep cove and made our way, waterfalls like ive never seen before, hanging valleys, the vegetation, the rock types, the islands, the dolphins, the fur seals, the utter silence when they turned the engines of and you could hear some of the birds and hear the water, the boat pulling up to a small cave where water falls of the rock face about and you put your arm out to catch some of the most purest water around, just the sheer physical make up of the fiords!!! There was one moment when i found myself relising just how llucky i am and how if you put the work in you will get rewarded, seeing these places just puts the perpective on everything and increases the enthusiasm in me even more.

Now what ive learnt, and been trying to learn about- ive been trying understand the difference between a sound and a fiord(fjord-also spelt this way) and learn about the different areas.

So Fiordland is situated on the south-western corner of the South Island. Most of Fiordland is dominated by the steep sides of the snow-capped Southern Alps, deep lakes and its ocean-flooded, steep western valleys. Indeed, the name "Fiordland" comes from spelling of the Scandinavian word for this type of steep valley, "fjord". It features a number of fiords often misnamed as sounds. This leads me onto where ive been struggling to understand the difference but my understanding is of this; fjords where a glacier has cut a ushaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock and this has been flooded, a sound is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight and wider than a fjord. Then i later read how a fiord is also a type of sound formed by glaciated valley on the coast which the receeds or the sea invading a glaciated valley.

Doubtful Sound is a very large fjord (despite its name), in the far south west located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound.There are three distinct arms to the sound, which is the site of several large waterfalls, ;Helena Falls at Deep Cove, and the Browne Falls which have a fall of over 600 metres. The steep hills are known for their hundreds of waterfalls during the rainy season. Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that scarcely mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains, and stained brown with tannins from the forest. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, saline water from the sea. This fiord is home to one of the southernmost population of bottlenose dolphins. The Doubtful Sound bottlenoses have formed a very insular sub-group of only about 70 individuals, with none having been observed to leave or enter the Sound during a multi-year monitoring regime.their habitat, which is much colder than for other bottlenose groups and is also overlaid by the freshwater layer.

Other wildlife to be found in Doubtful Sound includes fur seals and penguins (Fiordland crested and blue), or even rare large whales. The waters of Doubtful Sound are also home to an abundance of sea creatures, including many species of fish, starfish, sea anemones and corals. It is perhaps best known for its black coral trees which occur in unusually shallow water for what is normally a deep water species.

I hope that provided you with some detail and understanding of what ive seen today, the boat took us into one of the arms and this is where we saw the bottled nosed dolphins which is something id always hoped to see at some stage and so that was an extremly pleasant surprise i wasnt expecting. Going out to meet the tasmin see and seaing fur seals....you certainly smell them befire you see them, i saw so much in the 3 hours and loved the few minutes we had in a sheltered bay where they turned all the engines off and told us to just appreciate the sounds of nothing.... but for me it wasnt nothing it was sounds of birds, water and sounds of the incredable world of nature!

Theres so much i could wright in todays blog about the flora and fauna, the earth quakes that are commonly felt hear, so i will leave this until the next blog as i gain more knowledge about it.