Fiordland - famous for 2 things - incredible scenery & sandflies. As the latter tend to spoil your enjoyment of the former - a word on sandflies. They look like very small flies- but they bite. When they bite it hurts like a horsefly bite then goes away. Until that night……….. & for days & days thereafter……..when you spend your life scratching yourself until you bleed. This is a Stewart rant , only applies to him!!

Unfortunately nobody told us that the south coast is also afflicted with this plague - so we arrived in Fiordland with Stewart already well "sand-flied up"- about ½ doz bites that drove him mad which he'd picked up in Bluff or somewhere down there before even arriving in Fiordland

First stop was Lake Hauroko, NZ's deepest lake. After a 35km drive down a gravel track there was just Vod, Stewart, forest, a fantastic lake & of course the sandflies. By daubing ourselves with vast quantities of noxious chemicals(insect repellent) we managed to be able to leave the van. Problem was, the sandflies then sneaked into the van every time we opened a door & lay in wait until the noxious chemicals wore off so that they could bite us at will during the night ! another rant!! Next couple of hours were spent hermetically sealed in the van having dinner then hunting sandflies so that we could go to bed.

Next day we got into the Fiordland routine, get up, get dressed, apply noxious chemicals to all parts of body likely to be exposed, then & ONLY then open the van door. We then went for a chemical assisted walk to a view point way above the lake - listed as "Steep". They were not joking. Not sure what was the worst - climbing up a sheer cliff in a wet greasy rain forest on all fours or trying to get back down again without tripping up & breaking a leg. Maybe we should change this from Fiordland to rantland!! Vod really enjoyed it, the view was magnificent. Stewart was VERY grumpy & didn't care about the view.

Next stop Lake Manapouri A beautiful mountain fringed lake. We now began to understand Fiordland. In Manapouri, the sun is shining, nice weather very pleasant. Across the lake the mountains seem to have clouds permananently attached to their summits. It's the barrier effect. All the bad weather rolls in from the Atlantic/Tasman Sea & sticks to the high mountains of Fiordland then deposits enormous quantities of rain on the Fiords. For example Manapouri, annual rainfall- less than 1 metre. 10km away on the other side of the lake - 6.5 metres. Then barely 40km away from Manapouri on the other side of the mountain in Doubtful Sound - over 13 metres of rain per annum ! ! !

Doubtful Sound is very very remote & probably looks exactly the same today as it did to Captain Cook when he "discovered" New Zealand nearly 250 years ago. The scenery is amazing as was the journey to get there. Boat trip across the lake + 25km forest track over a 700M col before we dropped steeply down into the Sound. The weather was overcast, dark & broodingso we got dark brooding photos - but it didn't rain so a great day was had by all as we cruised the entire length of the Sound as far as the Tasman Sea & back again. No rain, no wind, a place untouched by human hand - very lucky day.

Then our luck ran out with the weather. Plan was to drive up from Te Anau to Milford Sound and compare Milford's sheer cliffs with Doubtful's sheer scale. Mother nature had other ideas. We drove the 2hrs to Milford & the rain got worse and the cloud cover got lower & lower. By the time we reached Milford Sound we could have been anywhere on the planet - visibility zero. The weather forecast being ditto for the next 4 days we decided to cut our losses and drive out of Fiordland to somewhere with a "normal" climate & come back later. Queenstown, adventure capital of NZ is just 60km across the mountains from Milford Sound. BUTit took us 5 hours as there is no road so you have a 250 km drive to get around the mountains.

The sun was shining in Queenstown"adventure capital" of NZ so after a quick look round we fled the coach tours, jet boat rides, bungy jumpers & general loonies and found a wonderful campsite by a lake, 20km and a world away from Queenstown.We spent 4 days walking in the mountains, visiting Arrowtown, an old gold mining town and a bit of mountain biking(including a new sport -"aquatic mountain biking" - the Arrowtown-Macetown track which we attempted to cycle has 25 river crossings - & we are not talking about insignificant puddles here ! !) whilst waiting for the weather in Fiordland to change for the better - which it did by the following weekend. Watch out for Fiordland Part 2-the Sequel !