Grey cloud envelopes Queenstown as we leave on the relatively short drive to Te-Anau. The drive is along a "Scenic Highway" - to be finest I don't know why they bother marking highways as "scenic" they would be better off just marking the ones that are a bit dull. That would save a few road signs.
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| More Scenery |
We have the road to ourselves pretty much as we make our way through yet more stunning scenery, If this is the busy period, it must be pretty lonely here during the quite times.
We stop for breakfast at a tin shed/cafe/toy shop. It's a wizard wheeze as local kids seem to come in to play with the toys and get to play at clearing the tables and restocking the shelves. A confusing conversation ensues as maria wants the full breakfast with bacon and sausage but the woman suggests she has the egg on toast with extra hash-browns and mushrooms. The end result is the same and we are both confused as to why she insisted on it being different.
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| Not just a shed - it does food too |
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| Local farmer stops for tea, whilst his dogs wait for him |
As we make our way to Te-Anau the sky darkens and the rain comes down, but it's just a brief shower - part of the fiordland policy of making sure the mountains are clean and tidy for new quests.
Te-Anau is a lovely little town on the banks of the lake, much smaller than Queenstown an our hotel is just a stonesthrow from the centre of town. As we check-in the receptionist says that we have a very nice room, one of only 2 with a balcony. She aint kidding, we apear to have a suite. Now in Christchurch a suite meant a normal hotel room with all 4 walls still standing, but here we have basically 2 hotel rooms knocked in to one, two balconys, 2 huge TV sets, kitchen and a jucuzzi bath. This sort of luxury aint for the likes of us!
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| Our lounge |
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| bedroom |
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| Bathroom with 2 seater jacuzzi |
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| One of our two balconies |
We walk the 100 or so yards to the doc for the trip to the glow worm caves. Now what was quite weird was that although there are 6 trips to the caves every day, on our particular trip were the welsh couple we had met on the interislander ferry and the Japanese couple who we had given number plate details to in Fox. Strange that our paths all crossed at that one point.
The boat ride accross the lake takes about 30 mins and is another one of these catermerans that really nip across the lake. Then you disembark and into the visitors centre where, we got a shot explanation about the glowworms. Then we walked into the cave, with the occasional stoop for the low bits. Now a cynic might think that there weren't really any glow worms there and that someone had just strung the ceiling with green led lights, but I'm not a cynic.
As you moved about the cave, occasional patches of twinkling blue/green lights caught your eyes. Finally you move up to the lake at the end of the cave where you get moved about on a small tub boat in silence and complete darkness (apart from the twinkle of the glow worms). It's a really magical effect and it's hard to believe that itr is caused by hundreds of hungry little worms with light shining out their backsides!
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| View from the boat (no glowworm pics as you aint allowed to take photos) |
After that it is back out and onto the boat back across the lake. We found a pleasant little family run place for dinner that not only did a vegetarian starter Maria liked but the main course was good to, They even managed to forget to charge us for the vast quantity of wine Maira drunk and when we queried the bill they let us off it for being honest.
On the way back from the restaurant I even managed to snap a half decent sunset using the pier for the flying boats as a makeshift tripod. Te-Anau is a difficult place not to like.
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| Flyingboat sunset |
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