damn that victorious beer tasted fine!

ok. I have my limits of decency and self restraint, but a beer bet is
just irresistable. right? ha. all our fellow passengers are going home
with pictures and videos of "that American girl" hanging off the front
of the boat being drenched in the cold cold waterfall. what can I say.
there was a beer at stake! :D somebody had to do it.

drinking water from the falls...

the driver of the boat pulled us into the bottom of one if the falls,
and encouraged everyone to grab a glass, and drink the fresh water.
then the driver made a jovial little dare over the loudspeaker...
"I'll give a beer to anyone willing to go under the falls....."

well we had just me this group of nice respectable people, and as nice
American girls, we had a reputation to keep up, right?

in awe of the surroundings

after the champagne ran out, we wandered the decks of the boat taking
in the amazing scenery of the sound as we cruised along. there were
too many waterfalls to count... often springing out of the impossible
mountain peaks. where did the water come from? the wind had picked up
a bit, and some of the falls sprouted out of the wallks of the
mountains, and disappeared into the air.

wasn't kidding when I said we went a little decadent!

we loaded up onto the boat, and were welcomed by the 3 crew member
with a champagne toast. lovely. as we left the port, we sipped the
champagne, and chatted with our fellow passengers. 3 "nice" Australian
couples (retired folks), 1 widowed English lady, a Czech couple (about
our age), and 1 German guy. everyone was quick to chat, share life and
travel stories. really nice group, clicked right away. or was the the
champagne flowing??? hummmm.

first view of doubtful sound

through the collecting clouds, we managed to get a little glimpse of
the sound as we came over the pass. stunning. the moody clouds really
seemed to fit the scenery too.

waterfalls everywhere

coming over the pass on the bus, the driver gave us a constant
commentary of the native trees and history of the area. we stopped at
few few viewpoints along the way, although we also started to get a
taste of the wetter aspects of a rainforest climate with a constant
drizzle of rain starting. apparently, it has been a dry summer, so the
locals were quite excited about the rain. it also fueled the many
dozens of waterfalls springing from the landscape all around.
selfishly, however, I was just mentally pushing my cute new tank top
to the bottom of my bag.

boat to bus to boat

made our way to the meeting point, and joined up with our small group
(heather and I decided to treat ourselves a bit on this final tour,
and booked an overnight on a small boat with only 12 people). to get
out to the sound, we took a 45 min boat across a lake, to meet up with
a 45 min bus ride over the mountains. it was super windy and a bit
wet on top of the boat, so I opted to relax, and enjoy the scenery
going by from the dry cabin.

NZ rainbow!

our laziness the night before made for an early morning start to head
out to doubtful sound. gosh, I was so over packing by this point, I
threw like 5 things into my backpack, and was ready so quickly... I
even showered (I am dirty and lazy on vacation, and choose sleep over
shower any day!). ha.

the drive out to the lake was gorgeous. even caught a little rainbow
in the distance. just over the dark shadow on the right mountains!