feldmanlarry

Nov. 10-11, 2017 — Te Anau to Queenstown, NZ

Te Anau, NZ

Te Anau is in the southwest corner of the South Island (see #11 on the map)

While Margaret was hiking on part of the Kepler Track (see her separate entry), I went on another Real Journeys excursion to see the Te Anau Glowworm caves. As they hyped it “Experience a mysterious underground world of rushing water before drifting in silent darkness beneath the luminous shimmer of hundreds of glowworms.”

It was a short 2.5 hour trip which began with a cruise across Lake Te Anau then a walk inside the caves. They didn’t allow any photography since it was mostly in the dark and the flashes would have disoriented people. We had to crouch into a small opening and on a slightly treacherous walkway (at least for someone with mobility problems) but it wasn’t that bad.

These pictures are from their web site — realjourneys.co.nz/en/experiences/glowworm-caves/te-anau-glowworm-caves/

They then moved us into these small boats through the cave.

We reached the highlight, which was the luminescence provided by glow worms. Each glow worm weaves hooks to catch insects and has its lights to help the bugs find them.

Stock photo of the “luminous shimmer” of the glow worms

I felt like an intruder in this beautiful private world of the glow worms. Hopefully, we weren’t disturbing their life cycles. I’m really glad they banned picture taking and were very strict about being totally silent in the cave. Someone asked if there was a waterfall in the distance but the guide said it was probably someone breaking the silent rule in another boat. Sounds carry very far down here.

Just as I got off the boat on the return to Te Anau Margaret arrived at the dock. This wasn’t as amazing a day as the Milford Sound cruise the day before but it was many times more active for me than I’m used to at home (or that I maybe should be doing).

The next day we got back in our car and drive back to Queenstown. No trip to New Zealand is complete without a picture of sheep. According to Expedia, there are about 39 million sheep in New Zealand or about 10 sheep for every human.

A couple dozen of the 39 or so million sheep in NZ

In the US. we’re used to deer running wild, not being farmed so we were surprised to see deer farms all over. Most restaurants we went to had venison on the menu. Again according to Expedia, there are approximately 1.7 million deer on 3,500 deer farms. NZ is the world’s largest and most advanced deer farming industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_farm

Deer having a rare opportunity to see people from the US

I was looking forward to the end of a week’s worth of driving with some pain and trying to remember to keep left. We did get our money’s worth by being able to stop all along the way from the northwest corner to the southwest corner of the South Island. It will be good to start getting right again.