Te Anau

Te Anau, Southland, New Zealand
Friday, November 29, 2013

It has been another travelling day today and we arrived in Te Anau mid afternoon. I knew I should have bought that sweater, in fact thermals would have been better, it's freezing and the mist is down once more. Te Anau is the jumping off point to explore the Fiordland area, particularly Milford and Doubtful Sounds. I'm sure on a good day it is fantastic, but it was pretty deadly this evening. I certainly couldn't live here, two nights will do. We are staying in a lovely B&B and if the mist lifts our room has clearly a fantastic view of the lake and mountains which hopefully we'll see tomorrow. There are three other couples here, all are now in bed and it's scarcely 10 o'clock, so a real wow. Geraldine remarked that she thought the woman sitting by the window seemed rather strange, which is true, as she was a man! She must wear her glasses more. It was the nose ring and the flowered shirt that did it! However, there is complimentary wine, beers etc, which may cease after we have gone . I'm currently enjoying a very palatable Villa Maria Sauvignon. Everyone else appeared to be drinking herbal tea when we got back. Oh dear !
We had a trip to view the glow worms this evening. Surely, there could be no trouble on a lake we thought. It is the deepest and largest lake in the South Island and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. There were white horses on it and vast amounts of white spray in all directions. Geraldine and I looked at one another in disbelief. Thankfully the trip to the caves was only 30 mins, so we survived. We were accompanied by the usual 3 coaches of Chinese/ Japanese / Korean snapping everything in sight, even though there was little to see. They did seem to find the safety notice particularly snapable! The cave system and glow worms were well worth seeing however and the second boat ride of the evening in a pitch black cave a first.
All one could see were these little pin pricks of green light on the cave roof. Slightly more interesting than living in Te Anau I would suggest. Let's hope I can revise that tomorrow.Read more