Thursday, January 22, 2009

Day Hike on Milford Track

We're still here in New Zealand's incredible Fiordland National Park, and today's excursion was a guided one-day hike on a portion of the Milford Track.

We came to New Zealand expecting that we'd see amazing landscapes, scenery and natural beauty.

What we didn't expect was to meet so many exceptional people. And on this day alone, we met three: Jacqueline and Theo, a really fun and interesting Dutch couple, who were making their third visit to New Zealand and shared so much of what they knew about the country with us; and Richard Parkinson, our guide, who amazed us with his gifts as a naturalist over the course of our all-day hike.

I have to first spend just a few sentences complementing Richard, a gifted teacher. He is encyclopedic about the various trees, plants and birds we saw throughout the day, and he has the rare gift of knowing when to talk, when to ask questions, and when to let nature do the talking. This is a guy who really, clearly enjoys his job. If you can get him to guide your hike through the Milford Track, do it.

And let me also say a few brief words about the excursion company Richard works for, Real Journeys. This company dominates the excursion market in the South Island, and for good reason: they are the best in the business. Their excursions are not cheap, but they are worth it. And while Richard was our favorite guide, all of the guides we had on each of our three excursions here (Doubtful Sound, Milford Track and Milford Sound) were excellent. I can name several Wall Street firms that could take lessons from this company about retaining talented and enthusiastic staff.

If you do come here to visit, be sure to use this excursion company. You won't regret it.

Back to our hike: Laura and I will let our pictures do the rest of the talking about today's experience. Once again, we were really lucky with the weather, as it was sunny and hot in a region that sees only 50 or so sunny days a year.

Like many of the best excursions here in Fiordland, this one involved multiple modes of transportation. We took a bus, then a boat, and then we hiked on foot.


This tree is one of the older trees here in the area. Trees grow relatively slowly here, so this one is likely some 800 years old.


Just a few photos of some of the flora here--we'll post some more of the hundreds of flora and fauna photos we took today in a future post.

Richard, our guide, teaching us all about ferns.


Bracket fungus:


We spent most of our day hiking through rain forest, but this region has many varied microclimates, including this swampy bog area, featuring a wide variety of mosses:


These are carnivorous plants, also located in the bog area. I've always wondered what militant vegetarians would make of these guys.


This was a trout swimming in one of the major rivers in the area. After I commented on how big it was, Richard said, "That's just a wee one, mate." No wonder this area is famous for trout fishing.


One of the many amazing views we were rewarded with during our hike:


Just one of the many, many stunning birds we saw that day (we'll post more in the near future hopefully, as well as some of the interesting bird calls we were able to record on our cameras). It's amazing to see exotic birds act so docile in such close proximity to humans.


A large fern, one of the common plants you'll find in a temperate jungle. Laura is actual size here:

After some climbing we arrived at a clear steam, and refilled our water bottles. The water tasted amazing, of course.


Many of the rocks here are covered with red lichen. It's the first organic matter to get hold of bare rock. Later moss will grow on the lichen, followed by grasses. Eventually the bare rock will be able to support shrubs and small trees will follow.


Here's our guide Richard, congratulating Laura on a successful hike today.


And here is our entire hiking group: Laura, Dan, Theo and Jacqueline. What a great time we all had! We ended up bumping into Theo and Jacquie later that night at dinner and then we got together with them again the next night for wine and cheese and some great times. We hope to see you in the Netherlands soon!


This final photo essentially tells you all you need to know about how casual things are down here in New Zealand: during the boat ride over to the start of our hike, the captain let one of the passengers drive the ship!!

I love this country.

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