The worst part was the mirror lake - Its carpark was full of cars, caravans, motorbikes, bicycles and guided tourists buses. We started walking and after 3 seconds Sarit stopped and started taking photos.
Roi: "Why did you stop? It's further down the track."
Sarit: " No, this is it."
Roi looked over the parapet and saw a silly little puddle... After seeing so many beautiful lakes and rivers on the treks, these road attractions in New Zealand are so disappointing.
With this bitter feeling we started the Milford trek.
It all began with a one hour boat cruise to the start of the track. Half of the boat was full of Japanese tourists with small backpacks who booked themselves the guided version of the Milford trek, which probably costs few thousands. These tourists spent every minutes of the cruise taking photos of every tree or rock that could be seen from the boat in every possible angle. We kept looking at each other wondering what these people see that we don't???
All along the cruise the captain of the boat spoke to the microphone explaining the history of the mountains surrounded us, but with the poor quality of the speakers all we could hear was annoying buzz that accompanied us the entire cruise. At least the coffee was free...
Finally we arrived to the start of the track and started to walk.
One hour later we were already unpacking our sleeping bags in the hut. Just one nice river along the way and a spacial vegetation area...
We were still optimistic about the views on the next days.
Few nice things on the first day were the two short guided walks that the hut warden gave, and a pack of cards Dror (Israeli) brought with him.
The second day was mainly bush walking (boring, boring, boring). We noticed that even if we were the last to leave the hut we were the first ones to arrive the next hut. Most of the walkers were not people you usually meet on treks. Some of them were families with children, others were elderly and generally speaking most of the walkers were not in shape.
After about 5 hours of bush we arrived to the second hut. Dror pulled out his cards and that was how we spent the rest of the day.
The 3rd day was supposed to be the highlight of the trek, which you walk up to the Mackinnon saddle and see the surrounding valleys and mountains. On the weather we had that day all we could see was the clouds that surrounded us.
From time to time the clouds gave us small window that we could see a piece of the view through it.
After a short break on the shelter and a few keas (mountain parrot) photos,
we started going down -again, bush... One side trip on the way leads to the 5Th highest waterfall in the world. We arrived to the hut just to find out it's going to be heavy rain the next day.
The 4Th day was mainly bush, with a few beautiful waterfalls, but since it was raining we didn't take any photos... On the last hour of our walk the rain became one of the heaviest we had. By the time we arrived to the end point we were soaked wet.
From the end point we had another short cruise but this time instead of cruise ship a small boat arrived. All the 40 people stuffed in and the sail began. It was very rainy and windy and the sea was rough, we felt like in a movie were the small boat sails up and down along the big waves.
20 minutes after we were at the Milford town's carpark, looking for a ride back to our car (again, why to pay when you can get a free ride?). Both of us were completely wet and depressed and we couldn't find someone to take us. Just when things were starting to look really bad a couple from Singapore showed up and saved us. They agreed to let us in their car even though we were dripping and 5 minutes later we found ourselves talking with them about weddings (they just got married, as well), food and few other things.
The views along the way were amazing. All the huge mountains from both sides of the road were covered with waterfalls because of the heavy rain. We think that we had better views on the road than we had in the Milford track...
Well, if you didn't understand it by now - Milford track is a disappointment :(
But at least we have an invitation to visit in Singapore...
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