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Milford Sound, New Zealand
Falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion
This is the official end of the track at Sandfly Point, where free boots await everyone who could have used them thirty three and a half miles ago.
Sandflies are a part of the Milford Track experience, even the New Zealand customs officers warned me of their ferocity upon entering the undiscovered country. After surviving their comparably mammoth, evil Australian cousins, sandflies didn't seem that bad. They were tiny and seemed to be repelled by my combination sunscreen/bug repellent. Still, I vaguely remember walking to dinner once after showering with no repellent, or forgetting to smear the inside of my wrists once, maybe even twice. They relentlessly attacked, seizing all opportunity to consume small amounts of my blood. At first the bite isn't that bad, but over time- two days, four days, one week, two weeks, three weeks, the bite remains, red, itchy, there. It just doesn't go away. I was home, weeks later and half a world away, and still itchy. While part of me admires their persistence, their fight against the odds, the little guy in the big tough world, most of me still wants to see the little tiny bastards dead.
The Milford Track experience started on a boat that crossed Lake Te Anau, and after hiking up 3,500 feet above sea level, it ends back at sea level and on another boat ride on the edge of Milford Sound. Then, after three nights of shared rooms in remote lodges, you find yourself with the unexpected luxury of a night in a private room in a standard motel, where you have a hair dryer available all to yourself that you can use to try and dry out the inside of your still soaked Lowa boots.
As part of the experience, and before you board a bus back to Queenstown, there is one last thing to do in the morning: a guided boat tour of the sound that you walked all that way to see.
After thirty three and a half miles of rocks and moss, the Milford Track leads you here, to the legendary Milford Sound, as moody a fjord as you're likely to ever find. A boat tour of the sound is included as a bit of a reward for having successfully completed the track- the tour boat heads tantalizingly close to the open Tasman Sea as it passes sheer rock cliffs and waterfalls over deep, forbidding water.
Even though Milford Sound is on the southwestern part of the South Island of New Zealand, it is not the farthest south that I have ever been- that would have been thirty three and a half miles ago at the start of the track at Lake Te Anau. Still, Milford Sound is pretty far south, in fact its closer to Antarctica than it is to Uluru. And as the seals lounge around as if there are no indigenous land mammals to worry about, it is a reminder about how far away I really am. Milford Sound feels farther away from home than anywhere else I have ever been, possibly because it is.
There are a lot of waterfalls, far too many to chase, with any one at any time feeling as if it could be the one, the only one that matters.
