Day 13: Te Anau
From the size of some of the hamlets on the way here, I envisaged Te Anau as being two huts and a lamppost, but it's quite a large and busy little town. Nothing much seems to happen here but tourism, but despite floods and coronavirus, there's enough to give the town a lively feel, especially when it's sunny – which it was today, despite predictions of clouds. I spent a little while in town getting my bearings, then I booked a glow-worm cave tour for this evening. Then I visited a little weekly market in the local club. They had the usual things, but also some very nice food, so I bought a raspberry cheesecake and went off to eat it by the lake with my motel-made coffee.
Then I set off on a walk around the lake in the direction of the control gates, which they use to manage the water level for hydro-electric purposes. This took about fifty minutes, and then I went on from there to Dock Bay, in the rainforest on the other side, for another half an hour. Stopped on the way at a bird sanctuary, with a few rare and interesting specimens in aviaries.
With no way to get back but on foot, I thought it would be wise to turn around, and so I retraced my steps. A very wide and busy path, both for cyclists and pedestrians, but there were a few people with packs who seemed to be bent on doing the whole three-day trip around the mountain.
I had a few hours before the tour, so after a packed lunch I went the other way, north along the lake to a river outlet. This was much less travelled, although the scenery was equally dramatic, and at times I had the path to myself. There is a new housing development alongside but as yet they don't seem to have bothered with minor details like roads and fences; they've just plonked a few houses down at random in the pasture.
Got to the river mouth after an hour or so, then returned the same way. There were a few little mice scurrying across the path, which I think are the first wild native fauna—other than birds—that I've yet seen. Plenty of roadkill, but it all seems to be possums and hedgehogs.
Back in Te Anau with time to kill, so I tried some local beer. A Three Wolves Pale ale, which was very nice, and an Emerson's Orange Roughy, which was flavoured—hence the name—and not one of the ones that I had sampled at the brewery. I finished off with a venison pie, which was very nice though somewhat pricey, and suitably lubricated I strolled on to the boat for the glow-worm cave trip.
Across the lake we went, and I was in the first group to get into the cave. Lots of noisy rushing water, as we shared the space with a substantial river. No major stalactites or stalagmites—too much action for that—although you could feel limestone forming on the underside of the steel handrails. A few glow-worms on the way, and then into a boat in total darkness (though the guy next to me had a radium watch—who still wears those?) for a rope-drawn trip through the main cavern.
Back at the dock we made way for the next group and left the cave for a brief forest stroll before returning to the Cave House for coffee and an illustrated lecture on glow-worms. One interesting point that came up during the walk was that the soil here is very shallow, so the trees rely on intertwining their roots with each other in order to stay up. That means that when one fails there can be a catastrophic collapse of many interlinked trees—they call it a 'tree avalanche', and one was on view quite close to Cave House.
Back on the boat and home to bed. A long drive to Alexandra tomorrow.
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