March 9-21: Fiordland

Fiordland is the best of the best as far as NZ scenery goes. There's a lot of beautiful places throughout the country, but this place has it all- lush beech rainforest covers the steep hills and valleys, with snow-capped mountains in the background, plus countless waterfalls, rivers, lakes and fiords.
Fiordland national park is the rainiest part of the country, the rainy season runs from january to december- they get up to 8 meters of rain per year, and they say more than 200 days per year of rain. Hence the lush layer of vegetation covering everything, plus the excessive number of waterfalls.
Most people's experience in the region is pouring rain every day. But by some miracle, we managed to catch the region in a couple of ultra-rare dry weeks. We were in Fiordland for two weeks, and only saw 2 or 3 days worth of light rain.

Fiordland is a massive national park, and its a very wild place, most of it inaccessible to anyone without a helicopter. There's only one road in, the road to Milford Sound- which passes through the Homer Tunnel, which cuts through a mountain.
Just the drive alone is breathtaking- the scenery gets better and better the closer you draw to Milford sound.

We did a hike to Key Summit, which is a viewpoint that's a side-option on the Routeburn Track. Some great views up there of lake Marion, a glacial lake suspended high up between two mountains. We later did a hike right up to the shore of the lake- it was cool to see it up close, we looked for the outflow and couldn't find any, then found a little gurgling whirlpool where the lake must drain through the rocks!

The Gertrude saddle was a great hike, we found one of the most photogenic waterfall pools there.
The Milford Track was of course magnificent, kind of the best of the best of Fiordland- more on that later.

Gunn's Historical Hollyford Camp was a great place to stay, had a real cabin-in-the-woods feel with their wood-fired hot showers and no electricity except when the generator's on.
We did an overnight trip on the Hollyford track, just a taste of the longer 4 day one-way track, but its an amazing place and a beautiful river.
The only downside to all that wild scenery is that being such a wild place, sandflies are bad, and there's lots of mice. Campsites were a little rough, and of course every decent walk or hike means ascending 300-400 meters. By the end of our 2 weeks we were exhausted and took a couple days off to rest!