Milford Track

(Hiked March 9, 2011 - March 13, 2011.) The Milford Track was actually the main reason we decided to vacation in New Zealand. Well, that and being nuts about the Lord of the Rings. I saw an article in the New York Times ("A Walk Through New Zealand's Watery Wild") and immediately gave it the top spot on my bucket list.

This particular trail has been called "the finest walk in the world". We hiked 33.5 miles over three days, with an extra two days for transportation to and from Queenstown. (Well, there was a bit of hiking on the first day, but as I recall, it was negligible, probably less than a mile.)

Despite how famous the Milford Track is, only a limited number of people are allowed to start this trail each day (100-ish?), and everyone is required to hike in the same direction. This means that if you keep enough spacing from the people behind and ahead of you, it's extremely peaceful and quiet, often to the point where you can imagine you have the entire gorgeous national park to yourself.

The Milford Track is open to both independent hikers and guided hikers, although the two groups use different lodges. We took the guided option with Ultimate Hikes (the only company authorized to run guided tours for the Milford Track) and thought it was a great experience. All we had to carry was our own clothes; they took care of hot meals and logistics!

I don't know how I can do this segment of our trip justice, except to start posting some of my favorite photos.

Day 1: The majority of the first day was spent driving and boating to the trailhead. We arrived at our first lodge, Glade House, fairly early in the afternoon.

We definitely weren't roughing it! To give you an idea, this is what our room at Glade House looked like:

This is the view of the river and the first suspension bridge, from the front yard of the lodge:

With plenty of daylight left in the day, the tour guides took us on a short nature walk where they taught us about the local plants. I'm very sad not to remember more about them, but the guides were really knowledgeable and funny and if I remember correctly, we even ate a couple of the plants notable for their pungency and prank potential. This is a picture of us on the nature walk:

Day 2: We started early, by crossing the suspension bridge.

There's not a ton of large wildlife in New Zealand, and the animals they do have tend not to be overly worried about predators, because there are no predators native to New Zealand. This means even the birds aren't very afraid of people. We saw a "cheeky" thrush that will come and sit on your shoe, if you drag your heel in the mud and make it think worms might be available. Wish I'd gotten a sharper picture, but here's one sitting on Chris's boot!

More pretty scenery from the second day:

Our destination on the second day was the Pompolona Lodge.

Day 3: The weather was gray and rainy on the third day, which was both kind of sad and kind of awesome.

It was sad because this was the day we reached the highest elevation, but we didn't see much of the view due to the fog.

It was awesome because we were surrounded by thousands of tiny waterfalls coming off sheer cliffs, and the forest was beautiful in the rain.

When we reached the highest point at the Mackinnon Pass, our guides made us hot chocolate!

My favorite wildlife sighting came on the third day too. We saw a weka, a chicken-sized bird often mistaken for a kiwi, but much more common. If you recall, New Zealand birds didn't evolve a healthy fear for predators, so like the thrush, the weka walked right up to us, and started attacking my shoelace, presumably because it looked like a worm! Not a very bright bird, but very persistent; it stayed for several minutes pecking my toe with great force and repeatedly tugging at the shoelace.

Later on, we had another sighting. We're not particularly good at spotting birds in general, but these guys apparently liked to walk on trails.

The forest was strikingly more green and lush on the other side of the pass.

Possibly too green and lush. My camera was really struggling with all the rain and mist by the time we reached Quentin Lodge. The display was starting to fizzle out, and then I tried to dry it out with a hair dryer, which turned out to be a terrible idea, because afterwards, the screen was completely fried (and never recovered). So the remainder of the pictures from the trip were taken using the old-school tiny view finder, and at the time, we weren't even sure the pictures were really being taken. (Turns out they were, thankfully! But many of the pictures get more blurry or dark from this point forward.)

Day 4: We finally saw the waterfall that's on all the marketing, Mackay Falls!

And finally, we reached the end of our 33.5 miles, at Sandfly Point. Sandflies are like mosquitos, and there were clouds of them at Sandfly Point. The legends say that the gods made sandflies, because people would become too spoiled living in such a perfect paradise without some form of annoyance. I remember us being bitten like crazy while this picture below was being taken. (Yeah, my smile does look a little forced doesn't it?)

We ended our day with a boat ride to our final destination, the Mitre Point Lodge on the Milford Sound.

Day 5: Done with walking! We took a boat ride around the Milford Sound, which was stunning, but my broken camera really didn't capture it well, except for this one shot of Chris by one of the waterfalls, complete with the New Zealand flag waving in the wind.

A pod of dolphins later visited our boat too!

Overall, the Milford Track was a wonderful experience. We highly recommend both the trail and Ultimate Hikes, and we'd love to do some of the other "great walks" someday too!

See more pictures of the Milford Track (there are lots and lots)!