Awakening from a fulfilling sleep following my first day walking the Hollyford Track, Pyke Lodge was humming with excitement as a mighty giant was flashing its face.
Typically shrouded in cloud and mist, the highest peak in Fiordland National Park, Totuku, was fully unmasked, strutting its sky-piercing grandeur with thefearless pride of a warrior.
This glorious mountain takes its name from the old Maori chief who the early Europeans encountered.
Podocarp Forest.
Day two on the guided walk started with a gentle stroll through the podocarp rainforest to Lake Alabaster. The rainforest provided a continuous font of insights as our guide, Justin, pointed out specimens including kahikatea, which ingloriously were felled to make butter boxes and clothes pegs.
The prized sightings were the rimu, gigantic gods of the forest, some as old as 1200 years. As a group exercise, we discovered it took 13 people to hug the full circumference of its trunk!
Fiordland's longest swing bridge
I also learnt 63 species live off the rimu tree, including the ubiquitous rata vine, which clings tenaciously to its trunk.
Also reliant on this forest giant is our highly endangered kakapo. The rimu seedling is their primary source of food.
Tree ferns.
Then there are the tree ferns that act like umbrellas in the rainforest, including the mamaku - the world's biggest tree fern growing 25 metres tall.
Wreathed in fast dissolving whiskers of morning mist, Lake Alabaster greeted us like a freshly polished mirror, its reflective quality is superlative.
Next up, an intimate encounter with the longest swing-bridge in Fiordland, a staggering steel and wire construction strung across the pristine waters of Pyke River.
On the far side of the bridge, we noticed the sign for the Demon Trail, a gut-busting 20km-long hilly trail that free-roaming trampers have to contend with to reach Martins Bay.
Mercifully, our guided experience had a far more pleasurable traverse in store, with a jet boat ride down the rapids of the Hollyford River to Lake McKerrow. The interplay of alpine, rainforest and watery vistas were seraphic.
Lake and alpine vistas
Our next port of call was the lakeside site of the ill-fated settlement of Jamestown, where pioneer settlers in the 1870s struggled, toiled and ultimately failed against formidable odds to establish the remote outpost as the new capital of the South Island.
From the vestiges of Jamestown we walked our way to Martins Bay, with more sumptuous podocarp rainforest to admire. The increased birdsong was also conspicuous.
Kaka, fernbirds, kakariki, tui, grey warblers and those lusciously limpid notes of the bellbird all added to the avian choir, as we drifted beneath the forest canopy, before the windswept sand-dunes and booming surf of the Tasman Sea served up a change in scenery.
