Last Day

Date: 6th May 2010

Wednesday 05th May

Awoke to FOG! This wasn’t part of the plan – however by about 9.30am it had started to show signs of lifting in parts, so we headed across Lake Manapouri to the Power Station at West Arm, through the Wilmot Pass and into Doubtful Sound. We tracked along the Sound which was breathtaking, but very eerie. The flight took us right out to the coast through Thomsons Sound where we were thrown around like a cork in a washing machine with a 40knot headwind and a ground speed of about 20 knots. We seemed to crawl up the coast (a bit like the little red engine chugging to itself….”I know I can, I know I can…..”) but with over 50 nautical miles still to travel to Milford Sound and a fuel reserve of less than 2 hours remaining, it wasn’t hard to do the Math. We would not make it in this headwind and were going to run out of fuel before we got there. So, with the weather deteriorating we diverted back into Charles Sound and wound our way through a maze of unforgiving mountains and cloud finally arriving at the South Arm of Lake Te Anau to a beautiful calm sunny day!!! After landing in Manapouri and a refuel we proceeded inland for the first time of the trip and completed the last leg of the journey as we headed for home. The flight took us through the Von Valley over Lake Wakatipu to Queenstown. At this point ALJ seemed to pick up speed as she was back in her home turf, and we headed over the Cardrona saddle back to Wanaka. The final leg of the journey saw us landing in Wanaka at 3.00pm having successfully travelled around the NZ.