Te Anau December 3-5

.What a few action packed days!  We arrived in Te Anau on Monday afternoon and met Adam, Nikki, and Nikki’s dad David for a pizza and pasta dinner.  Then after a good night’s sleep, we set out on a hike to Lake Marian.  It was a 3.5 hour 5.5 mile hike in and out with steep, uneven terrain.  I barely made it out.  But it was beautiful and fun, despite the rain the last half hour.  Unfortunately, due a camera malfunction, our pictures are few.

 

In the late afternoon the others left for Queenstown while Eric and I took an excursion across Lake Te Anau to the glow worm caves.  There photos were not allowed, but here is an image from the net.

Turns out glow worms are actually the larvae stage of an insect.  They make sticky webs like spiders to catch their prey.  Very spectacular to see

Today we woke up sore from yesterday’s climb.  Luckily a boat trip was on our agenda.  The almost 2 hour drive to Milford Sound was almost as stunning as the sound itself

 

The flowers are lupine, which are not indigenous to New Zealand.  They are now in bloom and are spectacularly scattered everywhere.  The locals consider them weeds.

Sea lions basking in the sun.

 

 

And the ride home

 

 

The bird is the Kea, which is a parrot that treats tourists the way pigeons treat New Yorkers: aggressively.  The tree is a fern tree very common to the rain forest of the fiord lands.

And so another exhausting but fun day ends.