Milford Track: Day 1

You cannot just spontaneously decide to walk the Milford Track.  You have to book months in advance because only 40 people a day are permitted on this popular walk.

We are already looking like drowned rats and the walk hasn't even begun.

You make an appointment for a specific four day span (including three nights accommodation at hiking huts strategically placed along the way) and you pray for decent weather.

Bad forecast for the your four days?  Tough.  New Zealand's Fiordland gets a lot of rain -- about 250 days a year.  If there isn't rain on the Milford Track, you have been cheated.

At least that's what we told ourselves as we pulled on all our rain gear and took the boat across Lake Te Anau for the first leg of the journey. 

The boat trip to the head of the track took about an hour, and was shared by some of the other 40 people who would be walking at the same time.

On our boat there were also a number of folks who paid big bucks for a "guided walk".  (We "independent" or "freedom" walkers paid too, but not nearly so much.) Guided walkers take the same time to complete the track but stay in "lodges" with hot water, real beds,  electric lights and meals provided.  We independents felt somewhat superior to these cossetted trekkers and comforted ourselves that the rain falls on everyone, but we had not paid quite so much to get wet.


All walkers are also plagued by the same sand flies.  The good news is that the bugs don't like the rain, so the message posted on the boat was not really necessary. 

We arrive at Clinton Hut in the rain. 

After an easy 5 km. walk we arrived at out first stop, the Clinton hut.  (The guided walkers only went 1 km to their accommodation! )

Clinton Hut is like a children's sleepaway camp: there is a  bunk room, a separate kitchen, and a toilet block out back for men and women.  A quick trip to the latter upon arrival confirmed that I would later be brushing my teeth and washing up in cold water by the light of a flashlight alongside some guy I didn't know.  I vowed right then to avoid a four-in-the-morning bathroom visit.  Creeping out of my sleeping bag, getting dressed, and picking my way in the rain and dark to the pitch-black toilets is not my idea of a good time.