Only in New Zealand: Short walks with epic returns

I've always liked the idea of tackling one of New Zealand's 10 Great Walks. It's the reality that's less appealing. The prospect of carrying a heavy pack filled with several days' provisions and sharing a dorm with a dozen Olympic snorers is no longer my definition of a holiday. Not to mention that spots on the most popular walks - particularly the Milford Track - often sell out within hours of being released.

If only someone provided a Great Walks taster. A way of sampling some of the most scenic sections of a selection of walks, all while staying in a comfy hotel surrounded by excellent restaurants. Cue Trips & Tramps' Fiordland Great Walk package - an inspired idea that includes guided day walks on the Kepler, Milford and Routeburn Tracks plus accommodation in Te Anau, a picturesque lakefront town two hours southwest of Queenstown. Sign me up.

What's better than a Great Walk? A Heli Walk. Our day on the Kepler Track starts with an exhilarating helicopter transfer from Te Anau to Luxmore Hut, one of three Department of Conservation huts used by hikers while tackling the 60-kilometre trek. The five-minute trip not only provides mesmerising views of the Murchison Mountains and cobalt blue Lake Te Anau, but it also means we start our 16-kilometre hike at 1085 metres, just above the tree line. Leaving Luxmore Hut, we follow a meandering wooden boardwalk through a billowing sea of tussock grass. Along the way, our two guides, Michelle and Alannah, point out notable fauna and flora, including inquisitive keas (the world's largest alpine parrot) and the carnivorous sundew plant, which traps insects using sticky hairs on its leaves.

To our right, low clouds drift along a snaking, mountain-flanked arm of Lake Te Anau, while ahead are the scree-covered slopes of our destination, the 1472-metre-high summit of Mount Luxmore. It's an optional 400-metre scramble up a steep gravel track to the top, but everyone in the group makes it and gets the all-important photo to prove it. After a picnic lunch in Luxmore Hut, we descend towards the lakefront, where a water taxi will transfer us back to Te Anau. Leaving the windswept alpine environment, we plunge into a dense forest of beech trees draped in old man's beard moss. Enroute, we pass hikers with towering backpacks just starting the four-day walk. While we'll all be tucked up in the high-thread-count embrace of the Distinction Luxmore Hotel in Te Anau, they'll be preparing for an earplug-testing night in a communal dorm. I know where I'd rather be.

Arguably New Zealand's most famous multi-day hike, the 53.5-kilometre Milford Track delivers an epic montage of glacial valleys, prehistoric rainforest and tumbling waterfalls. Hence why the roughly 7600 hiking spots each season are often snapped up in less than half an hour.

Our Milford sampler starts with a scenic two-hour drive from Te Anau along the only public road in more than 1.2 million hectares of soul-stirring national park. A boat transfer across Milford Sound delivers us to Sandfly Point, which today is refreshingly free of the bloodsucking critters for which it's named, and we begin our 11-kilometre return hike to Giant Gate Falls.

It's a delightful amble on a flat gravel path through dense pockets of verdant rainforest that echo with bellbirds, cuckoos and wood pigeons. We skip over tannin-stained streams and pass under towering beech trees smothered in moss. Often we emerge from the forest and find ourselves dwarfed by soaring granite escarpments and countless cascading waterfalls.

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It takes us two hours to reach Giant Gate Falls, a 30-metre-high torrent of water that gushes furiously through a narrow, fern-fringed gully. It's a suitably picturesque spot for morning tea before turning around to head back. This is the final section of the Milford Track and along the way I get chatting to two hikers who regale me with tales of monsoonal rainstorms and wading through thigh-deep streams. I decide not to mention the delicious lamb shank I had for dinner last night.

Of course, to really appreciate Milford Sound's majesty, you need to take a cruise. Before driving back to Te Anau, we join a two-hour boat trip that delivers a relentless bombardment of soaring peaks, plunging escarpments and more waterfalls than I've ever seen in one place. A wide-eyed American on the tour sums it up well: "There are just no words."

"I love it when it's like this," says Ro, one of our guides, as she sloshes through a stream crossing the track.

After two fine days, the weather gods have decided to remind us that Fiordland is the wettest part of New Zealand, with an average annual rainfall of around seven metres. While most of us are clad in high-tech raingear and fancy waterproof boots, our two guides are in shorts and trainers. Maybe they know something we don't.

Today's seven-kilometre return hike starts at The Divide trailhead, a one-hour drive from Te Anau. We follow the Routeburn Track through lush temperate rainforest before emerging into an exposed, rain-lashed alpine environment of hardy shrubland and coffee-coloured tarns. The plan was to enjoy lunch at 918-metre-high Key Summit, which according to our guides offers captivating vistas of Mount Christina and the Hollyford Valley. We'll have to take their word for that because today it's smothered in a grey doona of mist and cloud.

When we get back to The Divide, I discover what the guides knew all along. When it's this wet, there's no such thing as waterproof. I empty a cup of rainwater out of my allegedly waterproof boots and discover another two cups inside my supposedly waterproof rucksack. Of course, it's thanks to this prodigious rainfall that the region is such a verdant wonderland. Ro hands me a steaming cup of coffee and says with a grin, "Now you've got an excuse to come back."

Getting there: Air New Zealand flies non-stop from Sydney to Queenstown four times a week and via Auckland on the other days. Te Anau is a two-hour drive from Queenstown. Trips & Tramps can organise transfers or book direct with Tracknet Transport. See airnewzealand.com.au; tracknet.net

Touring there: The Fiordland Great Walk package includes guided day walks on the Kepler, Milford and Routeburn Tracks and can be booked with or without accommodation in Te Anau. Rates start from $NZ1295 without accommodation and from $NZ1910 with four nights at the 4-star Distinction Luxmore Hotel (twin share). See tripsandtramps.com

Explore more: newzealand.com

The writer travelled as a guest of Tourism New Zealand and Trips & Tramps.