Fiordland Outdoors — Local services in Fiordland Community

The driver to the Milford Track was lovely. Our issue was with Mark the company Director who was very rude to us because we got off the track 40 minutes late due to circumstances out of our control. I cannot in good faith recommend anyone use this transfer service.

There was an orange alert overnight on the Milford track and we were held back in the morning from starting our last hiking day (we were told that this information is always fed back to bus drivers so we had no real concerns) but did walk continuously without a break having to cross creeks and stop in lines to get under a large fallen tree blocking the track.

There was no warning given by anyone that the bus would leave without us once off the track, in fact the driver to the track had told us that she would be the driver to collect us and would wait until we were off the track at the cafe for us and that the last boat was 4pm. However the bus left without us because we were 40 mins late (3.10pm).

The ticket advised us to call a number if we wanted to enquire but there is no service on the track so no way to contact anyone and whilst we kept checking for service it wasn’t until we got inside the bus terminal that we got phone service.

The water taxi driver had no phone service or way to contact our driver or the office and in fact had to walk in land to try and get service but gave up and instead drove us to the bus station after a wait onshore.

At the bus station the office called and advised me there was no alternative and we would have to stay in Te Anau overnight. However a random bus driver came in from outside and asked if we were the missing hikers and asked if we wanted a lift back to Queenstown as two of his passengers had taken our spot on our bus.

We got off the bus in Queenstown and thanked the driver for helping us. We didn’t hear anything from Fiordland office to check if we were ok until we received very rude abrupt phone calls and emails from the company Director, Mark threatening us and belittling us for being late.

We are currently on holidays and find this treatment appalling and very unsettling and do not recommend engaging with...

I don't know If i have words enough to describe what a magnificent day myself and a select number of club members of the Wakatipu Anglers Club had when we organised a winter trip to Te Anau to fish the Waiau River.

The team at Fiordland Outdoors were incredibly helpful and set everything up for us. Mark and Christine were fantastic at organizing everything and put together a fantastic package for the club.

On the day we had 2 boats for a large group of us. The boats were beautiful, smooth and quiet. They had obviously been set up specifically for the job and they did it in style! Dion and Ken, our drivers were top notch guides, extremely skilled drivers and lovely blokes to boot. Both of them worked there so hard to get everyone fish through the day. I seriously cant think of two better people to run these boats. I guarantee that if you go out for a day with either of these guys you WILL have an amazing day!!!

What can I say about the river itself? Well as my wife said it felt like we were on the set of some amazing fly fishing move set. Picturesque beauty, and a fly fishing wonderland. The amount of fish in that fishery has to be seen to be believed. We were catching plump healthy fish on drys at the end of May? The hatches of large mayfly were something to behold. The river is truly alive!

As a fly fisher with 40+ years under my belt, I have to say I was blown away by this river. If you love your fly fishing then this is defiantly one of those places you have to fish before you die. I also double handed rod fish (Spey fishing) and this river could not be more perfect for it. Most of the club members were also fishing double handed rods and we all agreed that there is a lifetimes worth of water there to fish. Now I just cant wait to fish it again in summer when Dion and Ken said its even better fishing! woww

Without these guys the river is almost inaccessible, so id suggest you book yourself...

The boat pick ups were great but due to the route taking longer than expected we ran 3 hours over time.

Super happy the boat waited for us. The skipper was so friendly and congratulated us on our efforts.

When arriving back at the pick up, we were interrogated about what took so long. (We updated our outreach gps every 30mins from 4pm and informed them of this, he wasn’t interested at looking at the messages.

The following day we received an aggressive email with complaints and demanding money. The money we will absolutely pay as agreed, we have no problem, we caused the delay and understood this extra cost for the delay.

For what should have been a trip of a life time was tainted by the way your business tackled us being late.

Cheers Dan

P.s (after your response). Thank you for taking no ownership. From our end we checked in via gps every half hour and gave you regular updates because we knew we were running late and wanted to give you as much time to plan as we could. We never asked you to stay behind after dark, that was your choice. We had options to stay in a shelter.

If driving in a boat in the dark was dangerous, why would you do it and put everyone in danger, and why would you opt to then drive at double to speed and complete a 1.5 hour trip in 40 mins, in the dark.

We arrived at 9.15pm, dusk was at 9.02pm. We tried so hard, we trained for 6 months solid, but definitely did fall short for speed.

We had 4 people monitoring the gps, 1 was you guys. No idea why it didn’t get through. It did with the others people who kept checking in with us. We asked one of the other gps contacts to make sure you got our messages because you never responded via gps message, which they did.

Running in the dark is part of Ultra running and is safe with the correct head torches and experience, which we only had to do for 15mins of running.

Your service was not one star, just your response and lack...