Leg 1: Milford Track

Well, I have finally slogged it out and made it through four days of hard walking through the Milford Sound "Tramping" track in the Fjordland area in the South Island of NZ.

The track itself was an amazing thing to walk, enourmous mountains wherever you look and litterally hundreds of waterfalls streaming down the sides, and this was on the first two days which where clear as day and nice an warm, days three and four which consisted of the McKinnon pass and "tramp" to the Sandfly point respectively where the most murderous of the lot.

McKinnon pass is aproximately 1156m high at its tip, we climb from 600m to its peak in 2 hours or less (record is 45m according to the local hut ranger :O).
And foolish me climbed it TWICE!
1st time was on the 2nd day when it was clear so I could see the amazing views and get some pictures while the good weather lasted, and then again the next day when a full on storm rolled on past and dumped a F*** ton of snow on me - now clever old me was walking up the mountain and getting hot in all my thermals and extra layers so I stopped to have a drink and take some off - well by the time I got to the rest hut on the top of the mountain I was frozen stiff, dangerously cold not thinking clearly other than "Goddamn I want some dry warm clothes!"
However, with my omnipresent Aunty Sandy watching over me it took me 15 minutes, two more layers and a couple of nice warm cups of water to get me back to normality (Much to Sandy's relief - however she still hasn't let me forget it, nor would I want to, I know I learn the hard way but that was pushing it a little to far)
However after slowly walking down the opposite side of the mountain and recovering rapidly I was completely fine and pushing on.

I will now take this moment to balk at the sheer stupidity of my actions to pack such a heavy pack - weighing in at 18kg BEFORE I load up with 2kg of Water my pack was the heaviest I heard of - the average was 8-14kg.
BAD IDEA - my legs where so burnt out by the end of each day a half hour massage was needed on thighs, knees, ankles, calfs to make sure they would actually move the next day.

Now, back to the story!
Day four was our last day and perhaps the most fun, we woke very early as per the Rangers instructions after he informed us aprox 300mm of water was to fall that night, and to be ready early incase we needed to be helicoptered to the boat (We all LOVED this idea) so up we bounced, packed our packs and had our meals and waited.|
Come 7am the ranger says to us all that the stupidly expensive equipment they use to monitor water levels hadn't been working for the last hour so we had to simply push on out and see what its like for ourselves - so we thought, sure its probably so high it broke it, Yippe! but we where wrong, after a gentle 2 hours walking past some impressive spots we came to a point where the ranger stood with his pole and gestured onward with the words "Its only about here [knee to thigh] deep water for about four hundred meters, you'll be right - have a good time!"
I thought to myself "Bastard! but oh well it might not be that bad" and actually it turned out to me amazing, the previous nights downpour had melted alot of the snow on the mountains and the waterfalls where twice as many and twice as fast and powerfull as before - truly a sight to behold.

And thus we tracked for another few hours, through water puddles knee deep, ankle deep or simply about to flood the bridges we walked over, right down to done dry stretches with little Wekka birds wandering around searching for food (NZ birds are very friendly, just watch out for the Kea's [look at them on google and such, funny birds but with a bad set of habits!]).
This being said, my Aunty is a slave driver! After getting my 3 layers of socks soaked through I wanted to stop for a moment to empty it out, alas Sandy said "NO, its part of the experince and a waste of time, come on!" and I growled and said fine.
This was a bad idea... the waterproof sock I had on where sealing the water IN as well as OUT, so thus my socks had soaked up half of Milford Sound in them by the time we finished at Sandfly Point, not to mention making my feet twice as heavy and hurt twice as badly! But in the end it was all worth it - the track was amazing even if it was a killer, the sights as incredible as they are dangerous.

I may give the Kiwi's alot of shit, but damn they know how to find the good scenery.