The best 100 quid I ever spent . . .

What on earth do I tell you about my trip to Doubtless Sound? It was spectacular, fantastic, superb, and really quite good!
The trip was with "Chris and Diane" and was on a boat with only 6 berths and as it turned out there were only 5 of us. It started with a trip across Lake Manapouri, our skipper (Chris) picking us up on the other side of the lake. We were driven over a fabulous road, which at 12 miles long worked out at 100 NZ dollars per inch to build! It's not even tarmac, it's only gravel.
Chris loaded us up onto his boat (which is lovely) and then set out onto the Sound. Just so you know, Doubtless Sound is ten times larger than Milford Sound and gets to 430m deep. It's huge, remote and just as nature intended. The area is "blessed" with up to 7 metres of rain a year, making it real rainforest area. Despite this, it was all clear blue skies and sunshine when we arrived and stayed like that all day.
Chris proceeded to take us around the whole of the Sound, including going out to the Tasman Sea, cooked us fabulous food (including crayfish and venison) and took us to top fishing spots. I shocked and slightly unnerved myself by catching a shark which was probably about 5 foot long! We caught other stuff too and had fresh sushi, straight from the Sound.
At 6:30 in the morning, just as we were setting off after mooring up for the night, we saw dolphins and soon had four or five large dolphins swimming along with us, jumping about and racing around the front of the boat. The other people on the trip were two nice german ladies and a couple from . . . Bristol! The Briz couple, Simon and Alex(andra) were really cool and helped the time fly by. All in all, we were at Doubtful Sound for about 23 hours, which passed by more quickly than I ever could have imagined.
I am now skipping Milford Sound for the moment, since I am reliably informed I will most probably be dissapointed if I go straight from Doubtful Sound. Should anyone be thinking of coming to NZ, I simply cannot recommend this trip enough. It was an experience I will treasure forever.