Back on the grid! Milford and Martin's Bay

I’ve survived my first HelpX position! Actually, I’ve done a lot more than survived. The past two weeks have been full of incredible scenery, new experiences, and heaps of sandflies (which were probably the biggest threat to my survival overall). During all this time, my phone was basically a glorified alarm clock - zero service anywhere in the area. Now that's nature!

For this position, I started by taking a bus from Queenstown to Milford, which in itself is a stunning drive. Mountains rose straight up from the road on either side, and there was even a tunnel straight through a mountain at one point. After a bit of confusion in Milford, I got to the one and only helicopter company there, and soon met my first hosts. We got the much anticipated helicopter ride straight over the mountains and landed on the lawn in front of Martin’s Bay Lodge.

Big bus, little road

 

Mountains on all sides

The disappearing road

In uniform and ready to go at Milford

The helicopter was still climbing up up up

Snowy mountain tops

Flying over a river valley - don't ask me which

Approaching Martin's Bay Lodge

The lodge is one of two owned and run by the Hollyford Track Guided Walks company. The entire hiking loop is 50-something km through isolated and often flooded terrain, but guests who use the company walk in to Pyke Lodge in one day, get a jet boat ride to Martin’s Bay Lodge on the second day (and do a bit of walking in the area), and then get a helicopter ride out. They see less of the track (trail) overall, but get to hear stories, don’t have to carry any food, and even get chocolate on their pillow when they arrive at a lodge for the night. Of course, I didn’t know the finer details of this when I started out, so I was expecting something more along the lines of an AMC Hut in New Hampshire. Imagine my surprise when I found out my work would involve setting out chocolates on top of down pillows!

The lodge from ground level (staff quarters are off to the right)

Inside the lodge to the left

Inside the lodge to the right

Covered walkway from the back out to the guest rooms

Guest room complete with chocolates

The lodges are staffed by revolving hosts, so for my first week, Brooke and Phil, a Kiwi/Irish couple ran the show, and for the second week, Jimmy and Laura from the UK were in charge. Both couples were young, friendly, fun, and really made me feel appreciated. I’ll be really lucky if all my HelpX hosts are as cool as they are. My schedule worked on a revolving basis, since groups of guests arrived every other day. Here’s an outline:

“Day 1” : Wake up. Fold yesterday’s laundry. Clean bathrooms, wipe fingerprints off windows, vacuum, weed etc. as needed. During this time the hosts are cooking up a storm and they deliver lunch for the guests to a small cabin a little ways away. I hang out, do more upkeep tasks, and then midafternoon get to take the 4-wheeler out to the lunch cabin to clean up. Come back, work out, and hide away for the night once the guests arrive. Delicious dinner is brought to me, and I knit/watch movies/read until bed.

“Day 2” : Wake up just as the guests are headed on a morning walk. Strip all the guest beds and start laundry. Set out all the sheets and pillow cases and sometimes even make the beds. Vacuum guest rooms. Hide away as guests come back for lunch. Watch the helicopter brigade take all the guests away and unpack any deliveries. Finish cleaning/weeding/whatever for the day and enjoy a free night. Repeat.

The hiding away when the guests were in was a little bit weird, and the hosts said they felt the same way. But apparently some of the first volunteers they had in were not entirely respectable, and so it was decided by the higher-ups that we wouldn’t be able to interact with the guests at all. Oh well.

Even though I just wrote a whole lot of work tasks in my daily schedules above, I usually only worked about four hours per day. With such long summer days (sunset after 9pm), I had lots of time to explore the area.

I walked through a podocarp forest full of big vine-covered trees to Lake McKerrow for a quick swim. I took the trail up to Long Reef to see the seal colony there, and was rewarded with dozens of adorable seals and pups. On one night off we took the jet boat across the river to a beautiful beach for a sunset bonfire. On another night off we cooked up a bunch of Indian curry.

Green podocarp forest

On the shores of Lake McKerrow

Seals seals everywhere!

Lots of curious faces

Pup and its mama. Eeeeeek so cute!

Climbing the dunes up to the beach

Sunset bonfire 

Jimmy, Laura and I with our Indian dinner

I even got to ride in the jetboat all the way to Pyke Lodge one day when the administrative staff were in. While they were having a meeting, I walked up to Lake Alabaster and made a detour on the way back to one of the biggest swing bridges in Fiordland. It connected to a trail called “Demon Trail” which seemed appropriately named considering how narrow and twisting it was compared to the other flat and well-established trails in the area. I apparently got really lucky with the weather during my stay too – almost no rain in my entire two weeks – and got to do some really clear stargazing .

Swing bridge

View from Pyke Lodge once the clouds cleared

The only catch to being outside was that you had to keep moving or else swarms of sandflies would engulf you. Bugspray didn’t even work that well to keep these tiny monsters away. I would say that they were the size of a blackfly and caused a welt about the size of a mosquito’s. Luckily they only itch for a few hours after the bite, but these bugs are out all day long, so I was constantly getting new ones. According to Maori legend, the goddess of death was so impressed by the work of another godlike ancestor who dug out Milford Sound that she feared humans would forget their mortality when looking at it. So she created the sandfly for the area to remind them not to linger. That seems to match up with another little saying of the area, that if the sandflies weren’t there, everyone would be. Other creatures that I encountered were possums, which are a pest animal here and have very valuable fur, and deer, although only in the forms of scat all over the place and venison.

Possom on the porch of the staff rooms

I think I got really lucky with this experience overall. It is such a remote area that I never would have had a chance to see it if not for the work exchange opportunity. I was living along a river and within an hour’s walk of a lake and an ocean. The forest was basically a rainforest, full of lush green trees and vines and the constant chatter of birds and insects. It made me wish I knew how to identify bird calls - One funny one was a combination of singing notes and quacking sounds. Sometimes I got my kicks by repeatedly entering the “staff only” or “authorized personnel only” areas because I could, and it was really interesting to see behind the scenes of this type of hospitality – no dirty secrets, just lots of chuckles about how different my expectations were compared to those of this trip’s target audience.

I haven’t said much about the TWO helicopter rides either. On the way in I think I was a little awestruck and rushed, but on the way out I got to ride the scenic route with the guests and made sure to focus. The takeoff was straight up at first, but the really cool part was when we leaned forward at what felt like a 45 degree angle to really get going. Then we flew along the coast and through Milford Sound, and it felt like we could just reach out and touch the rock faces. Super cool. On a side note, Milford Sound is technically not a sound but actually a fiord, because it was carved by a glacier and not a river. By the time they’d worked all that out though the name had already stuck.

Flying back to "civilization" along the coast 

Helicopter pro

But wait, the adventure continues! I’d arranged for my transportation back to Queenstown to be pushed back a day, so from the Milford airport, I walked along the road to the Milford Lodge. After dropping off my stuff I got a shuttle ride back into town and proceeded to walk through its entirety and back to the lodge in less than an hour. In a town that gets 7-10 meters of rain per year, I somehow managed to see it on two sunny ones. Lucky me!

Milford Sound panorama

That didn’t stop me from getting wet though. After a quick snack, I was off for kayaking. A guide, four others about my age and I got a boat ride about half way out into the sound and then loaded into kayaks from there. To start, we paddled right up to Stirling Falls. It’s fed mainly by glacial waters, so we were the first people to feel those droplets of water in about 15,000 years! As I was approaching, I said that I felt like I was in the movie Avatar because of the lush green wall rising straight up. As we got close to the falling water, though, it suddenly got dark, wet and windy and I had a quick taste of The Perfect Storm before getting pushed back onto sunny seas.

Stirling Falls at a mist-free distance

After a paddle through the icy mist

From there we paddled, did a bit of surfing, and even used our paddles and a sail to make our kayaks into a sailboat and fly along the water. Our guide talked about the dwarfing effect, where tall things make other tall things seem small, and I could totally recognize it. The mountains around us were 1000-2000+ meters tall, mostly rising straight out of the water, but at a glance they didn’t look nearly that big. After picking out a single tree or something on the rock face, though, you could start to grasp the immensity. Since we were an evening kayak trip, the last tour boats went by at the beginning and we had the sound to ourselves. We were tiny little people in a big, deep piece of nature.

Three little kayaks vs kilometer-high mountains

Since the sailing helped us cover distance quickly, we had time for a stop at Bowen Falls, which is the biggest permanent waterfall in the sound. These are visible from certain parts of town, but we got to get up nice and close. From there it was a short paddle back to our landing zone, and I got to bed early back at the lodge. I caught my bus back to Queenstown in the morning and here I am!

Triumphant at Bowen Falls

There are a couple days of travel ahead of me, and I’ll be writing again from Christchurch.