Visit Waitai Lodge in Fiordland. Photo / Ngāi Tahu Tourism
On the edge of the Fiordland wilderness, Simon Wilson enjoys a slice of luxury at Ngāi Tahu–owned Waitai Lodge.
Straight away it’s obvious something is wrong.
We’ve already learned from the trip across the estuary that there’s a bit of a blow, but as soon as we step off the runabout onto the beach, a ravaging wind comes at us. Fine sand whipping off the dunes ahead, a thousand needle pricks on our faces, the sand sticking to the sunblock, the gale half knocking the birds out of the sky.
It’s our welcome to the Fiordland coast.
Heads down, coats drawn tight, we struggle up the slope, compelled by that wilderness rule that says if you’re on a hill, especially if it’s only a sandhill, you at least have to see what’s on the other side.
We barely make it, but we see enough to know the sea has a raging, sucking undertow and the beach itself is bleak, deserted and, like the sky above it, deeply grey. We can try again tomorrow, say the guides. Good thinking.
It’s so good to be in the wilds of Aotearoa, New Zealand. But it wouldn’t be so good if there was no risk of nature overwhelming you and nowhere is that more true than Fiordland. This whole trip, we will be on the edge of the weather or, more likely, right in the thick of it.
Having a good bed in a private cabin at the end of each day, with hot food cooked for you and the luxury of a sauna, that’s not half bad either. Throw in a couple of helicopter rides over Milford Sound, a luxury cruise with lunch and some deeply satisfying bush walks, and what you’re talking about is the newly renovated Waitai Lodge, owned and operated by Ngāi Tahu on the edge of Martin’s Bay, at the mouth of the Hollyford River, a few clicks north of Milford.
You can do the long version of the trip, which includes tramping the Hollyford Track, or the shorter, easier option I was on.
It starts with a minibus from Queenstown to Milford, past snow-capped ranges and into the astonishingly beautiful Eglinton Valley, where the wide grassy river plain runs between precipitous beech-clad cliffs.
The Eglinton is flat because it was once a glacier, but the grass is not there because of grazing. Thermal inversion pushes cold air down from the mountain tops where it sits on the valley floor, freezing the beech seeds that try to germinate.
Not that anyone told the trees. We were there last November, with the beech having its biggest mast in seven years. The valley flanks were covered in a glorious sheen of red flowers: spring among the evergreens, but you could almost be fooled it was a deciduous autumn.
Out of the valley, up past the rock faces and the glacial ice and waterfalls of the mountains, through the tunnel and down to Milford. Great trip.
And then to the heli, for an even greater one, sliding up those sheer cliffs and popping over the top to another sheer valley and another, the furious Tasman away to the left, the beech-filled Hollyford below, landing near the coast on broken land that used to have cattle but is now part of the great Fiordland park.
Waitai Lodge sits snugly near the river mouth, with tūī eating from flax caddies whose stalks are as thick as a child’s forearm. Kererū come scudding low out of the bush, over and over. You spray on the biodynamic bug stuff and enjoy the show.
With the beach a no-go zone, we go bush for the afternoon. I’ve never heard so much birdsong: riroriro, kākā, kākāriki, a shining cuckoo, bellbirds, and many, many more tūī and kererū.
They call it a “big trees” walk. The bush floor is a patchwork of flattened, eaten foliage: red deer have done that. They’re back there, somewhere, waiting for us to go so they can fill the place up again.
They say there are 300 epiphytes in the giant rimu overhead. I didn’t try to count. It’s a forest growing above a forest, complete with several species of native orchid, including the strongly perfumed Easter orchid and the large feathery clumps of the bamboo orchid, whose flowers are sprayed above you like stars in the bush.
The next day, as advertised, the wind has dropped and the beach is all on. There are middens all through the dunes, full of shells and bird bones, the remnants of hundreds of years of precarious settlement. And tiny native geraniums, little patches of colourful carpet on the sand. Driftwood everywhere, that sea roaring and ripping, mountains towering away inland, a beach with absolutely no one else there. It’s thrilling.
When Cook came to this coast, he called the inlets “sounds” because they were places for his ships to be safe and sound. Technically, though, sounds are made by rivers while fiords are made by glaciers. The Fiordland sounds are fiords.
On our way out, the heli takes us back over the beach just as the rain sets in, then down the coast and up to the head of Milford, with the waterfalls on either side starting to flow.
Another bush walk, with the rain like a lifeforce that keeps us grinning at each other, and then we’re out on the water. It’s bucketing now, and you wonder how anyone coped in the days before they could make genuinely warm, dry spaces where the weather can’t get in.
The boat cruises the waterfalls, some of them suddenly torrential, others turning halfway down into spray and drifting away, still more of them rising upwards, dancing away from the cliff edge.
Lunch on board is blue cod, cooked in a restaurant style with a puree. The rain never lets up. It’s so much fun.
By the way, the bus from Queenstown leaves at 6am, so you need a place to stay the night before. I was put up at the Rees, named for one of Queenstown’s founding fathers, a splendid hotel with very accommodating staff on the shores of the Wakatipu, just a short shuttle ride from the town centre.
MARTINS BAY, FIORDLAND
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Queenstown with Air New Zealand.
DETAILS
Where to stay: Waitai Lodge | Luxury Fiordland Escape in Hollyford Valley
Where to stay in Queenstown: The Rees Hotel Queenstown | Lakefront Luxury Accommodation.
New Zealand Herald Travel visited courtesy of Waitai Lodge and the Rees Hotel.