Milford track is one of the signature New Zealand tracks, and it gets more than 17,000 hikers every year. We puny day hikers shared the boat to the trail head with a group whose packs suggested they intended to hike the whole length. Even on the boat's outside upper deck, I could smell them. You know when a subway car is suspiciously empty, and you enter only to discover a putrid homeless man emanating waves of odor throughout the car? Well, that was what these 20 or so hikers were doing. I understand there's not exactly showers along the trail (actually, there are showers along the trail), but if these hikers had not even begun hiking yet, why hadn't they showered? I guess body odor is an important component when one strives to be close to nature.

Our day hike tour guide, who had a bit of a pouch for a belly, led myself, four middle aged individuals from Denmark, and a cute Japanese college girl who has thoroughly mastered the Japanese-hand-over-mouth-giggle. Many times, she had our guide take pictures of her as she stretched herself into many of the outrageous poses you might find on a Japanese game show. It was actually fairly entertaining, mostly because she was cute...and I think that was the point.

The hike had moments wonder as we emerged from the jungle-like forest to see incredible vistas of mountains and rivers. The stand out moment, however, was when took a side trail to a marshland, where green, red, yellow, orange, and blue mosses grew in a great ring around us, beyond which mountains formed an impenetrable barrier.

Strangely enough, this wasn't even my favorite moment of the day. That came a bit later, when we ran across a very singular man. With a rainbow backpack, short shorts, a mountain man beard, and a shovel, he came striding down the trail towards us. He's one of the fellows who maintain the track.

"Find many possum in the traps, lately?" our guide asks, to spark a conversation.

"Yeah, two today already," the man answers, smiling.

Then he reaches down into his bag and grabs around a bit before pulling out a craisins (raisin-cranberry hybrids) bag. My first thought: is he about to offer us a snack?

"Look," he says, opening the bag. I peer inside, and I see that it is completely stuffed full of hair. Possum fur, to be precise. Then, looking up right at me, he says, "I reckon I could make at least 20 nipple warmers out of this."