Fiordlands: The most magical 🧙‍♀️ place on Earth

The moment finally arrived – on day nine, we set off towards the Fiordlands. In totality, we spent a total of three days in the area. I’ll do my best below to describe each day in detail.

Day 1:

We arrived at our holiday park in Manapouri, a quaint town serving as the outer gateway to the Fiords that lay ahead. We arrived to our tent site early afternoon and spent a few hours unwinding, recharging our electronics and straight up relaxing. (We vacation hard.) For the day, we had two activities planned: Wild Wool Gallery and Rainbow Reach (part of the Kepler Great Walk). What is the former you ask? The former just happens to be a freakin’ alpaca farm. (Queue joke):

Vacation you say?! Alpaca my bags!! Ha ha ha

The alpaca farm happened to be about a five minute drive from our campsite. The farm was family-run and for a shear 🐑 (haha) $20/pp, we got an hour-plus tour of the farm, the alpacas, the blistering hot New Zealand sun and the beautiful clothing and accessories that Jessie the owner handcrafted from the alpaca wool. The tour was given by one of the owner’s friends that work with the alpacas, and she was able to explain some about the alpacas within each of the different pens. To be honest, the tour wasn’t super informative but when you’re feeding alpacas out of your hand and taking pictures of week-old babies, who cares? Btw, a baby alpaca 🦙 is called a cria. The tour took a little longer than we thought, leaving less time for the hike we wanted to do. The hike followed part of the Kepler Track for a few kilometers. Unfortunately, we started a little late and weren’t going to be able to make it to the end point so we turned around about 45 minutes in. On our way back, we met a couple of backpackers and one of them happened to be a graduate from VMI! He noticed our VT hat and we started talking about the Hokies. They had done the entire Kepler track, 60 kilometers, in three days! We walked down together, listening to their awesome stories about New Zealand experiences they’d had so far. After saying our goodbyes, we drove back to the Holiday Park and made some stir fry for dinner in the kitchen. Day 2: Into Fiordland National Park.

The drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound is one of the most beauutiful drives in the world supposedly. It’s two and a half hours from bottom to top, and there are a bunch of stops along the way to pull off and explore. On day 2, we did several of those activities. The highlight I would recommend from that day is the Key Summit Track. It follows another of New Zealand’s Great Walks – the Routeborn. The hike itself was listed as easy to moderate but let me tell you, New Zealand easy to moderate does not equal American easy to moderate. The whole 1.5 hours was an uphill climb; with all the switchbacks, I don’t think there was any point that it leveled out. About halfway through the hike, we met one of the AirBnB-ers from Christchurch we had come to know. Small world! We talked and realized we had basically been doing the same trek around NZ so far. He told us we were about halfway done and saying our goodbyes, we continued the god awful ascent upwards. Once we started cresting the top, the excitement started to replace the physical pain in my legs. We got beautiful views of the different mountains in the park and of the alpine lakes. Once we crested the top, we followed signs for the Nature Walk, an additional twenty minute stroll to more panoramic views. But why stop here? Days ago, we met a lovely fellow American who emailed us this NZ guidebook listing all the obscure and off the beaten path things to do. One of them just happened to be for this hike. Past the summit, we hiked an additional twenty minutes through bog and LOTR-esque landscape (felt like I should’ve blown the horn of Rohan) until we reached the ridge of the mountain where we had a jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, picture-pounding 360 degree view of everything. The view was also a miracle because the Fiordlands are one of the wettest places on the Earth, getting over 200 days of rain. They measure their rain in freakin’ meters! So we were fairly lucky to get the view we got.After snapping some last minute mental pictures that will hopefully stay in my head forever, we made the journey back to the car park, just about snapping my knees trying not to fall downhill. This trail was 100000% worth it and I would definitely do it all over. At this point, it was early evening and with tired soles, but happy souls, we made our way to our tent at Cascade Creek Campsite to make dinner and pass out because the next morning we were going to MILFORD SOUND!!

Day 3: Our Milford Sound cruise was booked for 9am. When we unzipped the tent, we were met with fog everywhere we looked. Dismayed, we continued the drive to Milford Sound within Fiordland NP (FNP) and we were surprised to see the fog dissipate and leave in its wake beautiful rock cliffs with waterfalls flowing down everywhere we looked. At one point on the drive, we went through the Homer Tunnel, piercing the rock to allow road access to Milford Sound. Work on the tunnel started during the Great Depression era and was completed in 1953. The drive was a little scary because the tunnel continuously drove downward into the mountain as opposed to a leveled drive one usually finds in a tunnel. Emerging from the other side, we were almost at MS. Finally making it to the car park, we were here. The eighth wonder of the world, one of the highlights of our trip, the Milford Sound. Boarding one of the few commercial tour boats in the sound (we were impressed with how untouristy it felt), we were off. The Real Journeys boat slowly floated up and down the entire sound, with commentary from the captain about the geology and geography of the area. We’re used to history being described in the million of years ago sense, but the Fiordlands were recent in history. Less than 20,000 years ago, there was nothing more than a plateau in place of the now jaw dropping rock cliffs and fiords all through the Fiordlands, that were all glacially carved (pretty good namesake). The captain pointed out the fauna and flora, and we saw dolphins in the Tasman Sea and fur seals playing on the rocks. Everywhere you look, the views were absolutely stunning. The waterfalls gushing down the slick rocks, the vegetation growing on the cliffs, the color of the water were all breathtaking. The cruise lasted an hour and forty minutes and we enjoyed every second of it. Looking to the future, we’d definitely love to come back and do this again or another sound (Doubtful Sound is another beautiful sound to explore, but much harder to get to and therefore more expensive). After the boat ride and doing the nature walk along the beach, we took one last look at the fiord before continuing on with the day. At this point, with our bodies still sore from the hike the day before, we decided to have an easy day. The next stop was The Chasm, a series of powerful waterfalls which gave perspective to the sheer amount of water that FNP receives each year. We then drove down a gravel road to Humboldt Falls. Instead of doing the thirty minute hike to the falls viewpoint, we opted for something else. You see, the guidebook I mentioned earlier also had an altered path for this hike. The author suggested walking up a kilometer of the creek bed to the falls and a swimming hole. We rock hopped for about thirty minutes but the onset of rain and slippery rocks unfortunately had us turn around. If the weather was more cooperative, I think we would have made it. Still a fun experience. Feeling the fatigue start to set in around 4PM, we made our last stop at Mistake Creek. Now, I’m as skeptical as you are, but the super abstract guidebook we have recommended hiking through fifteen minutes of boggy rainforest to get to one of the few remaining walkwires in use. What’s a walkwire you say? A walkwire is the scariest most unsafe way you can probably cross a river, besides swimming through the river itself. It consists of three wires, the one you walk on and the two ones you hold onto for dear life crossing the water. It was awesome! Definitely didn’t feel unsafe at all and the drop down wasn’t that far 😉 We’ll likely never get the chance to cross one again so hey, when in New Zealand. Now completely beat, we drove back to the campsite, made a rather tasty freeze-dried meal of chicken tiki masala, and played some cards. It started raining ☔️ right before we went to bed, so we crossed our fingers that the tent ⛺️ would stay dry through the night. Lucky for us, no water got into the tent.

Waking up on day 4 of the Fiordlands, we left the park and headed back to Te Anau before heading to Queenstown. There is a bird sanctuary in Te Anau that does a feeding every morning at 9:30am, and we made it just in time. Going into the enclosure with the feeder, we learned about the rare Takahe bird, native to New Zealand. Like the famous kiwi bird, the Takahe is flightless and about the size of a chicken. We heard about the amazing conservation efforts to bring these creatures back from the brink of extinction. They were only just rediscovered in the mountains of the Fiordlands 70 years ago, and since then, the estimated population has increased from roughly 200 to 360+ takahe. The birds only lay an egg 🥚 once per year, so the process to strengthen their numbers has been consuming. It was great to hear about all the conservation efforts, not just with the takahe, but a lot of native New Zealand birds, that conservationists have been pursuing. After watching the feeding, we filled up our tank and said goodbye to Te Anau.