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.