Dion & Christy's Travels: Fiordland

Almost the entire Southwest corner of New Zealand's Southern island, 12,500 square kilometres, has been defined a national park. Despite that size, Fiordland, with its spongy rainforest, snowcapped peaks and hairline Fiords possess about as much scenic grandeur per area, as anywhere the country. This has brought deserved recognition; the UN has declared nearly the entire region a World Heritage Area, and it’s a stopping point for just about any tourist.

The accessible Milford Sound attracts a high concentration of those visitors. For many a boat ride along the misnamed Fiord (a Sound is formed by rivers while Fiords are carved by glaciers, often with dramatic benefits to future photographers) is worth the park visit alone. 400 foot Waterfalls that splash into the dark waters help build an appreciation for the magnificent scale of the mountains that surrounds you.

We set aside 5 days in the park, which is also an enclave to 3 of the 8 NZ Great Walks, 14 other Fiords, and a skyline full of mountains. Enthused by our day in Abel Tasman we kayaked the quiet islands of Lake Manapouri one afternoon and set off on the 3 day Kepler track in the remainder of our time.

Our first day on the track we walked through a beech forest along lake Te Anau before climbing 2500 feet to our 1st hut just above the tree line. When the weather is good the second day it is considered one of the most scenic in the park; it is almost all along an alpine trail with views from ridgelines & saddles. Counter to the trend of most our trip, we were unlucky with the weather that day. Cloud cover,wind and rain made it a wet 6 hour walk surrounded in white. The last day of the 33 mile route brought us down a valley of moss carpeted rainforest, along the shore of a second lake (Manapouri), the bank of a large river and finally over a swingbridge to the exit point. Even though we missed the touted 2nd day views of the tramp it was an impressible trip, especially for Christy, who the next afternoon was already pitching for another overnight hiking opportunity. You won’t hear Dion complain about that development.