The Hollyford Track

We were met by a new set of guides for this segment of our trip at Te Anau, and drove many miles up into the mountains to begin our trek. The guides were entertaining and very knowledgeable, Bart Crawford having lived with the indigenous Maori people for some time and learning their language and history, and Peter Crawford being a published and well esteemed Botonist who could also talk about wildlife and geology. We walked from inland beech forests into coastal rainforest, with a density of foliage and ferns and epiphytes (symbiotic plants growing high up in trees) unlike anything I've seen before. The Rata tree is highly versatile in that it can begin growing as an epiphyte on the side of a tree, send down roots and stringers like a vine, and then thicken to either completely wrap around it's host or form a stand alone tree on its own. The vines can be an inch in diameter and flexible like stiff wire, but harder than bamboo. Fern trees bring to mind Jurassic park with their palm-like trunks rising to an expansive umbrella of large fern branches spreading out from the top. There are 129 fern varieties in NZ out a total 180 or so known in the world, of every size shape and description. The color montage is amazing.

We crossed numerous "swinging bridges", suspended by cables, and saw much evidence of heavy duty trail maintenance along the way. Two weeks before our arrival, heavy rains caused flooding that wiped out some segments of the trail and buried trail sign under ten feet of gravel and river rock. This is a very active place with respect to weather and erosion. The Alpine Fault crosses our trail, and while there has been 400 KM of lateral displacement along the fault, there has also been 20 KM of vertical dissplacement over the last 50 million years. Maximum height of the mountains is about 3 KM, so erosion is almost keeping pace with the currently active mountain building (about the speed that fingernails grow!).

Though we hiked long and hard each day and fought off the "sand flies", we were met each evening with the pleasant sight of a Lodge equipped with screens, bunks, and most importantly gourmet food and cold drinks. Part of the trek involved jet boating down the river over rapids and some distance along the lake near the coast. Jet boats were apparently invented in NZ to navigate the rivers. We worked our buns off but had a reward at the end! Following hikes on the coast to explore early Maori and British settlements, we flew south along the coats to spectacular Milford Sound at the northern part of fjordland.