Day 6 - Te Anau

Lance Again:

"Te Anau" means the cave of swirling water current in Maori.  That name is definitely fitting, but more on that later.
Let's just say on this trip it was not the easiest thing in the world to get Maggie and James moving first thing in the morning.  We knew we didn't have a lot of time before our glowworm tour that day, but wanted to get in a hike in the morning.  However, all hikes around Te Anau are either really long or really short.  Since we were a little late rising, we settled for a secondary choice of a hike.  We went to Mistletoe Lake and hiked around it to a path around Lake Te Anau.  It was really beautiful, we were just spoiled from the prior day's trip to Milford.

After the morning jaunt, we decided to head into town to sit by the lake and have some lunch.  James had a great time going after all of the leaves on the ground (we call them vegetables), and then he turned into a tired little guy.

 In the afternoon, after some ice cream, we headed onto a boat that took us to the other side of Lake Te Anau to adventure through the Glowworm Caves.  Unfortunately they don't allow pictures in the caves so we weren't able to get any good shots.  However, the caves and the river system through the caves were awesome.  There were waterfalls; gushing, swirling pools everywhere and constant rushing water echoing off the cave walls.  The water there is so pure, both in the caves and the lake that you can actually drink right from it.  So of course we did.  In the caves, you walk half way and then get into a river boat and go through the caves for the other half.  James had a little too much fun hearing his voice echo in the caves and looking at all of the cool glowworms so we were trying to keep him calm the entire time.  As for the scientific aspects of the worms I'll let Maggie fill you in on these.

 

Maggie here.  Ready to nerd out on science?! Me too!  Glowworms are larvae that look kind of like maggots, only they glow on the ceilings of caves.  Their bio luminescence is a chemical reaction with the oxygen in the air.

I took this from the Te Anau website since we weren't allowed to take pictures.

We were touring during baby glowworm season.  There were lots of faintly colored specks (babies) surrounding the more brightly glowing worms.  But this period of harmony is short lived.  Glowworms are very territorial.  During the information session before the tour they showed us a video of a glowworm eating another worm for getting too close.  They prefer small flying insects but will go all kind of cannibal on you if you invade their personal space.

In order to catch their prey, glowworms form long, sticky strands that hang down from the cave ceiling.  Very pretty, no?

Waitomo Caves website

Back to Lance.  After the tour we headed out to the beach and enjoyed our cruise back to Te Anau.  We were really impressed with Te Anau and loved the area.

Even though we really loved Te Anau, we couldn't wait for the next stop on our trip, which happened to be Queenstown.  The pictures below are the view of Lake Wakatipu (the lake around Queenstown) when you enter from the South.  With views like this, how could we not be excited to get to Queenstown?

We figured that since it was Christmas Eve we should have a decent meal, so we stopped on our way into town at the Frankton Ale House.  James had a great time playing with his new presents BOUNCY BALLS at dinner.  It was a great Christmas Eve Feast.

Day 5- Milford Sound Part 2

Continuing our drive from Milford back to Te Anau:

During the drive back we decided to just eat dinner by taking a pull off on the road and eating in a nice area.  Well, it just so happened that I found a cut-off on Lake Te Anau that provided seclusion with a view of over half the lake and the entire shoreline.

We made some dehydrated meals and enjoyed playing with James and watching the sun go down over the mountains on the other side of the lake.  It was truly special and we even had the same collapsible camping cups on hand that we used during our hiking trip in Rocky Mountain National Park where I proposed to Maggie.  Those rubber cups have shared in many moments.

It was truly a day to remember for a long time.  We capped it off by staying at the Te Anau camp grounds that night, which happened to have the most surprisingly clean bathroom facilities we could have ever dreamed.  Maggie and I were both in shock when we walked through the doors.  It was like a spa.  We would have taken pictures but that would probably be weird.

Day 5 - Milford Sound (Fjord) Part 1

Lance reporting.

We woke up at Mossburn Country Campgrounds, which was right in the middle of a valley that was surrounded by some mountains, making me feel like we were in the southwestern part of Colorado, but with grass.  Large grassy valley with purple and pink flowers.

We drove north to Te Anau then kept on going to our Milford Sound cruise at 1 pm (2.5 hr drive from our campground).  We had a rough night with James the prior night so we were a little tired trying to get moving in the morning; however the scenery helped perk us up quite a bit. Maggie was even more excited since we were going to pass the mountain range that represented the Misty Mountains in the Hobbit movie. Nerd alert.

We passed a number of different climate zones on our way up to Milford- it switched between deciduous forests to temperate rainforests to evergreen forests to open valleys with rivers running through them and flowers popping up everywhere.  The rivers that run in the area are turquoise in color and just don’t look real.  Then once we got a little closer to Milford the last 45 minutes of the drive is surrounded by waterfalls on all sides.  It was truly beautiful, we didn't really know where to look to take in all of the wonderful aspects of the drive.  James did not cooperate so well, however.  He was a little fussy in the car and would wake up every time the car stopped.  Therefore Maggie wanted to get out a few times and I pretty much made her get out of a moving car and then kept driving back and forth until she could jump back in the moving vehicle.  The camera had to stay on action setting because she had to take pictures on the run to keep up with the car.

 

We took a 3 hr cruise through the sound with Real Journeys and it was worth every penny.  The Sound (which technically is a fjord, but the word wasn't known when Milford Sound was named), is gorgeous and provided great views everywhere.  A fjord is carved by a glacier and a sound is carved by a river. Milford Sound was carved by a glacier.  Our captain said that in general, glacier-carved valleys are U-shaped and river-carved valleys are V-shaped.

Just to give some perspective, that waterfall you see is Stirling Falls and it is 151 meters high.  That's 1 1/2 Statues of Liberty.  Now look at the vertical rock face right next to it...wow.

Peacefully sleeping....

...What did I miss?!

Camera?

            

I'M

COMING

for YOU.

AH-

CHOO!

The waterfall just blew away into mist.

We got to see some sea lions and fur seals during the cruise, which was great.  Maggie counted 22.

We had a bright and sunny day, which the captain acknowledged as about as good as it gets since the climate at Milford is actually a temperate rainforest and receives about 200 days of rain a year and is known as New Zealand’s wettest inhabited place.  James even enjoyed the scenery and the movement on the boat.  Of course he was the talk of the trip by others on board since he was being his adorable little self.  Our friends Ryan and Kelly were actually doing the Milford Sound track a couple days after we left, and it's one of NZ’s Great Walks.  It’s about 60 km over 3 days.  With James this just wouldn't be possible for us, but I’m jealous of the views that the track will provide being high up in the range around the Milford area.

During the cruise you go through the fjord out to the Tasman sea, which is a lot calmer than the fjord itself.  On the way back in they take you under the waterfalls and you get sprayed with mist.  The water was very cold!  James didn't know what the heck was going on.

After the cruise we headed back to the car, which was about a half km away.  When we got back to the car, Maggie was upset because she lost her new sunglasses that I had gotten her for Christmas.  I ran back to get them (so that we could do the drive back to Te Anau in the daylight and take in the scenery on the way back) and when I got there, no sunglasses were to be found.   I ran all the way back and went through James’ diaper bag, where I uncovered the glasses.  She was embarrassed, I was sweaty.

We decided to stop at a few of the sites on the way back as James was fussy and it didn't really matter.  The Homer Tunnel is the highest point of the drive 1270 meters.  It is not a lined tunnel so when you are driving through it you can see the bare rock glistening under the headlights.  There were no lights int he tunnel, only reflectors, so it was very eerie and you felt like quite the adventurer.  It is a single lane tunnel so only one direction can go through at a time.  There is a light system that tells you when you can go, and you can wait up to 15 minutes in line.  On our way back we were the only ones waiting in line so we turned the car off and got out to take pictures.  You can waiting in this rock gorge with waterfalls all around, so in the silence you hear nothing but raging water echoing off the sides.  It was very peaceful.

Stay tuned for part 2!