By the fourth day of our week-long trip through Fiordland aboard the cruise boat Milford Wanderer we take the patches of wet weather in stride. "Absorbing some of the local atmosphere?" I ask Cathy, a physician from Sydney, when we meet on deck during a rainy spell. "Yep, working on my dewy complexion," she replies.

Image courtesy of www.fiordlandtravel.co.nz

The spectacular beauty of Fiordland - recognised by the United Nations as Te Waiponamu World Heritage Area - is so well known it is almost clichéd. Steep, glacier-carved waterways; dense, glistening rainforests; rugged coastlines. But like many of life's high points, no amount of description compares with the first experience of Fiordland in the flesh. At the same time it both allures and intimidates.

For those who like their servings of wilderness blended with large dollops of creature comfort there is no better way to get the Fiordland experience than on the Milford Wanderer. "People who can't afford to helicopter in or who don't want to stamp through the mud and get eaten alive by sandflies can see Fiordland with us and have a hot shower and a good feed at the end of the day," says the Wanderer's captain Peter Bloxham. During the summer months the Wanderer is engaged in day cruises in Milford Sound, the most northerly of the fiords. At the height of winter, when the weather in Fiordland is at its coldest but driest, it is dedicated to these extended tours through the southern fiords.

We begin with a boat trip west across Lake Manipouri then bus across the pass to Doubtful Sound. At midday we board the Milford Wanderer. "Someone has packed everything but the kitchen sink," one of the crew comments as he loads one particularly heavy bag onto the boat. It's mine. I have panicked at the thought of the Fiordland weather and filled it with way too much gear. Trying to look nondescript, I drag it into my cabin when no one is looking.

The sheer walls of Doubtful Sound are shrouded in mist as we depart. A waterfall careens out of a hanging valley high above us. Many passengers are veterans of a trip on Milford Wanderer to Stewart Island the previous year. They gather in the dining room to get reacquainted. I find myself with a handful of others who cluster in and around the wheel-house on the upper deck where Peter and nature guide Ron Peacock discuss the schedule for the trip.

"We can't guarantee the weather, only the sandflies," Peter tells us. "Our itinerary and excursions are all weather dependent. One thing we can be sure of is a calm anchorage. Fiordland has so many coves we can find a sheltered spot, no matter which direction the weather comes from."

Over our first lunch - lamb shanks - I begin to meet the other passengers. Like me Dallas is worried that her stomach will not be up to the turbulence of the open ocean when we leave Doubtful Sound. She passes me a seasickness pill before I go back to the upper deck. Luckily the wind and swell are from the north, so when we head into the open ocean so they are behind us when we turn south. It means smooth sailing and a faster than usual trip to the haven of Breaksea Sound.

As we make the passage Ron identifies the seabirds that cruise in to check us out. Gannets, cape pigeons, and mollymawks. What we really want to see is a royal albatross with their three-metre wing span. Ron says they have been known to fly from the east coast of Australia to New Zealand in three days. Just before we reach Breaksea Sound one glides into view. It wheels around us once but then drifts off.

Image courtesy of www.fiordlandtravel.co.nz

The silent bush of Fiordland holds the stories of an assortment of intrepid visitors. Explorers, Maori foraging and war parties, sealers, whalers, miners, hunters, even conservationists. In some ways the imprint of these interlopers has been less dramatic than that of the pests - rats and stoats - that have decimated the region's birdlife. As we enter the sound we cruise past Breaksea Island at a respectful distance. The Department of Conversation has eliminated all mammal pests from it, and reintroduced populations of rare indigenous insects, lizards, canaries and ground-dwelling saddlebacks are re-establishing themselves.

In the evening light the Wanderer cruises up Breaksea Sound to our first anchorage, Beach Harbour. In the morning Ron outlines the tentative schedule for the day. "Plan A is to travel down Acheron Passage to Dusky Sound. We are getting into Captain Cook territory and we will visit several of the key places he was at. If the weather holds we'll land parties in Luncheon Cove on Anchor Island and walk up to a lake." Everything goes according to plan.

Captain Cook's presence here is almost tangible. In 1773, he and the crew of his ship Resolution spent five weeks in Dusky Sound recovering after months in Antarctic waters searching for a southern continent. The crew overhauled the ship, explored and mapped the intricate network of islands and bays, and fattened up on fish, duck, seal meat and beer brewed from manuka and rimu. Everywhere are the names Cook bestowed upon the landscape - Resolution Island, Wet Jacket Arm (the home of the elusive Fiordland moose Ron tries to convince us really do exist), Sportsman Cove, Thrum Cap Island, and Cascade Cove, where we spend our second night.

We follow in Cook's footsteps in more ways than one. With meals such as lasagne, blue cod with red capsicum sauce and bok choy rice, and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding plus fresh baked muffins for morning and afternoon tea, we too feast well during our stay in Fiordland. "I feel like a battery chook," comments Don, an electrician from Palmerston North, after another spread. We look forward to the exercise of our excursions on shore if for nothing else than to make room for the next banquet.

On our third day Plan A is to visit Pickersgill Harbour, where Resolution anchored during its Fiordland sojourn. Then we will cross the bay to the walk into the Pigeon Island settlement of Richard Henry, the naturalist who fought a futile 15 year battle to save the kakapo, and other flightless birds from extinction. At Pickersgill Harbour we climb up a wooden walkway to Astronomers Point, where Cook's crew set up an observatory. Ron points out the stumps of trees felled to set up instruments. To stand at this spot is to experience a deep connection with a heroic past. "It's like a shrine," Ron says, and it is.

Plan A accomplished we head out to the Tasman Sea and make the trip down the coast to Chalky Inlet. Once there we continue with our routine, a sumptuous lunch followed by an afternoon walk. This time we check out the boiler that powered the steam engine of a long gone saw mill before walking several kilometres along the bay shore. It is the first of several logging and mining sites we visit around Chalky and Preservation Inlets. "You'll be sick and tired of old boilers by the time I'm done with you," Ron tells us.

It rains heavily during the night and in the morning small waterfalls have sprouted all around us. Like modern day equivalents of Cook's sailors, the first task of the Wanderer's crew is to find a suitable source from which to refill the boat's tanks with tea-coloured Fiordland water.

Image courtesy of www.fiordlandtravel.co.nz

As they set up a pump in a stream it is an opportunity for the passengers to break out the kayaks. Eighteen of us paddle up the coast. The red, yellow and blue of our kayaks add bright, synthetic dabs of colour to the more solemn hues of sea and bush. It feels good to use another set muscles. Some of us explore a small sea cave surrounded by rimu and rata trees that grow right to the water's edge. Later we come to an inlet where a large stream tumbles out of the bush. The turbulence of the stream's white water tips one of the party out of his kayak. Our guide Chris is able to help him back into his kayak. He assures us the water isn't terribly cold but I am sure he is even gladder than the rest of us that Wanderer has come up the bay so we don't have to paddle back.

Despite periods of rain, the weather seems to clear whenever we set out on an excursion. When we get to Preservation Inlet, the most southerly of the fiords, we carry out several more 'Plan A's - a walk to the Puysegur Point lighthouse, visits to all those boilers at mine batteries and smelters. The weather cooperates to the extent that we get a rare treat. Puysegur Point is one of the roughest spots on the New Zealand coast line but the day we are there it is so calm we are able to venture out and fish with handlines at the entrance of Preservation Inlet. For twenty minutes we are in a frenzy hauling in groper and blue cod.

Things change on the last day, however. The Wanderer's stabicraft drops several parties off to gather rubbish off a beach. We spend two hours at the chore then gather to return to the boat but it is nowhere to be seen. Ron gets a call on his radio."Okay", he tells us, "its time for Plan B. The wind has come up and it was too rough for the Wanderer to stay where it was so it has gone around the point to Cuttle Cove. We'll walk over the headlands and board from there." The change of plans enlivens us though it is not a major drama. A path takes us over a ridge to another beach then a couple of kilometres through the bush to Cuttle Cove. An hour and half later we are back on board the Wanderer.

Our last evening meal is a gregarious affair. There is a verse writing contest and jokes. After a week together new friendships have formed. In the morning helicopters shuttle the next group of passengers in and us out. During the transition we keep an odd distance. They are the newcomers, we are the veterans. After our twenty minute helicopter ride, however, we are back at Lake Manipouri where there are cars, asphalt, and newspapers. As a return to real life looms, the misty waterways we have left behind are already becoming the dreamscape of memory.