Wajing up to the sound of the lake outside the tent and the view of the mountains past the beach and water is something I could get used to doing a lot more often. A quick breakfast on the beach and back into Manapouri to board a boat across the lake. The lake is expensive and up to 450m deep in places. Our journey was a cross-lake 30km hop to the west arm, the site of the Manapouri power station. The lake surface sits 178m above sea level and a tunnel in the mountains was dug to allow the water to drop this distance before turning huge turbines and then running through another tunnel out to sea. The building of the power station and the tunnels meant that there was a road over the mountains to where the sea fingered it's way inland through drowned glacial valleys; Doubtful Sound. A bumpy 45 minute drive on an unsealed road brought us to Deep Cove, where a boat was waiting for us, and 9 others. This would be our home for the next 20hours or so.

The step, almost vertical, glacier-carved valley sides rose out of the water on either side of us hundreds of metres into the deep blue sky. Everywhere you looked, the views were incredible.

Chris, the skipper and Travis were the staff looking after us, a Belgian family of four, and two other couples, one kiwi, one German. About half an hour after seeing off to sail deeper into the sound Travis served up a lunch of freshly caught crayfish and salad. We'd learn later that the crayfish are pulled up each evening from pots further out in the sound too be cooked for the next day's lunch.

After lunch we made our way down crooked arm, slowing down en route to see some dolphins swim up alongside the boat, and did some kayaking and swimming near the end of crooked arm, one of the southerly arms of the sound. The water was surprisingly pleasant, temperature-wise. Swimming between precipitous cliffs in such an isolated part of the world, with so few others is something that I'll not quickly forget.

One of the things that really amazed us was the vegetation. Not the variety and range (although the red and green flowing rata, nz beech and so many ferns were cool), but the fact that they grew on such steep slopes. In some places the sides were very close to, if not beyond 90° and still there were 5m trees growing out and up from them! Scars were does sound where a rockfall or landslip had come down the sides, taking everything with it. Being an active tectonic area, this isn't uncommon. The volume of rain the area gets (7-8m/yr) also leads to some of these slips.

We got dried off, had some tea and biscuits and slowly made our way out to the Tasman Sea, stopping to try to catch some fish for dinner. It took a wee while but we were successful, reeling in several blue cod and a couple of sea perch.

At the mouth of the fjord there was a colony of fur steaks that we stopped and looked at and ten, just as we turned around, Chris speed a crested penguin - very rare for this time of year - sitting on a rock so we allowed down and got some photos of him.

Ask the while, Travis had been preparing our dinner: spuds, veggies, venison and the fish weed caught, poached. Weed brought on some wine ourselves and it was probably or best dinner in NZ so far.

We sat around after dinner chatting and drinking while Chris navigated us to a very quiet arm of the fjord to tie up for the night and go to bed in our cosy cabins below deck.

What a day.