Fiordland -- Te Anau

((Aside, once again, I am left with no options on a computer that will not let me upload the pictures to Picasa; and no, Dan, there is no internet cafe in this little town. This means that all the rest of the picasa pictures will have to wait until i get to a real computer in Houston.))

Anyway, Monday Night 17 November, I stayed in Fiordland National Park at Cascade Creek Campground, this is north of Te Anau, and I was cold (after all the forecast was for a high of 7 C and snow). For the first time I ran the little gas heater that came with the vanette, and it worked beautifully (thank god or perhaps Grant, for that). When I woke up sure enough there is snow on the peaks, and the snow line was a few hundred feet above my camp site. It is a beautiful blue sky morning, and I took lots of pictures. I had a lazy morning since my glow worm cruise is not until the afternoon, and drove out of the Park and into Te Anau to get the camera cards cleared and put the pictures on a disk. In Te Anau, I wrote the past few entries in the blog and uploaded pictures....that was all mentioned in a previous blog entry.

As I left the park, I got many good pictures of lower fiordland without cloudy tops. This part of the park is not as dramatic as the areas further in (by the coast, eg Milford Sound), but there are still really good pictures that illustrate the verticality of the landscape. (You will eventually be able to see them on Picasa.). One place is called Mirror lakes, which are basically a few clear areas in a wetland complex right by the side of the road. I got at least one decent "mirror" picture, but there were these ducks (but they arent "ducks" they are called something else) and they were swiming in these "lakes" and diving down to eat whatever it is that they eat, and otherwise rippling the mirror effect, so.... I also saw a BIG trout, and took a picture of it, but with nothing to show scale, it just looks like a fish. Also, the tour buses arrived and disgourged their contents of endless Japanese tourists, busily snapping away pictures, so I did not stay too long.

After lunch, I went on the Te Anau Glow Worm Caves tour. If anyone comes to New Zealand, definitely DO NOT take this tour! This has to be the world's lamest tour! It is sold as a cruise on this lake to the protected island on the other side, then a small boat ride through the glow worm cave complex. It started out OK, I learned that the Lake is 60 KM long, and is the second largest lake in New Zealand and the largest on the South Island. It was created by massive glaciers that carved it out (like Milford Sound) and melting snow and rain fills the lake. The tour on the lake was pretty lame, because they drove the big boat so fast to where the glow worm cave is, that it was too cold to stay up on top and too rough for taking decent pictures of Fiordland up close on this side of the lake, which is what I wanted to do.

When we arrived at the glow worm cave area, immeditely the lot of us (there were about 60 or 70 people on this tour, mostly elderly Aussies) were swarmed by sandflies. (I got a nice bite on my neck -- still hurts, days later.) Then we were broken down into groups of 16 for the little boat, and told about the tour. We were only going to be in the very first chamber, where the glow worms are, no tour of the entire complex with its underground river and waterfalls, etc. No photos were allowed, and we were not allowed to talk for big portions of it. The entrance to the cave is about 1 meter in height, which meant that we had to stoop to get in -- great on the back, let me tell you. But that was nothing compared to the squat little bench in the small boat that we had to sit on. That truly was murder on the back. Then we got taken into the dark cave, the boat banged along the side, and we could see the little green lights of the glow worms. It reminded me of a ride at Disneyland. After all anyone can cram you onto a little boat and have tiny little green points of light on a ceiling in total darkness flick on and off. Who to say it is a little worm or electric lights on the dark ceiling?

It was interesting to know that the cave is only 12,000 years old (young for caves) and that it is layered limestone and sandstone. The glowworms spooge gobs of sticky stuff that look like droplets of water from the ceiling, and then they turn on their green glow to attract insects. As the insects are attracted to the light in the darkness, they bungle into the spit-created lines of sticky glue. Once prey is caught, the glowworms turn off their glow, and snack on their prey. The brighter the glow, the hungier they are. They eat whatever bug they catch be it moth, sandfly or whatever. They will often knock their neighbor glowworms off, or even eat their neighbor glow worms if they feel like they are being crowded. I also learned that the little buggers turn into a flying insect that looks like a mosguito, but has no poker (nor any digestive system). Their only function in this stage of their short 10 - 12 month long life is to reproduce like mad during the 48 or so hours that they are in their flying bug stage. They then die of exhaustion and starvation. But you could learn all that on the Discovery Channell, and save yourself the $60 NZ and a whole afternoon of your precious NZ vacation! (Take the Doubtful Sound cruise instead.) About the only interesting thing is that you could imagine that these flickering green lights may be the constellations you may see on an alien planet....but my imagination is good enough that I did not need to waste the day on this cruise! It was definitely the biggest disappointment of my trip to New Zealand

The best part of the whole day was walking along the lake shore line back in Te Anau. It was a glorious sunny day, and the Lake was blue and all the mountains in Fiordland were in full view (these are the same mountains that appeared from the cloud bank as I drove in on Sunday). I really liked Te Anau. It was peaceful and serene. The shoreline is all one big long park with a nice walk along it and beautiful mature trees and etc. The town is small, only about 1200 or so residents, but it obviously fills up in summertime for tourists -- most of the buildings along the shoreline (across the street from the water-side park) were hotels or backpackers (hostels).

It was one of those places that I thought that I could retire too. Of course this could be that I was there on that one awesome day, and the rest of the time it is cold and rainy, sort of like when people visit Corpus on those nice days in February when the wind isnt blowing and the bay is all still and blue, then they move there and by August they are like, "why the frack did I move here!!" Or it could be like my grandfather who was raised in Kansas ("like hell on earth: the hottest place in the summer and the coldest place in winter."), and when he reached the age of reason, he moved south. He thought that Corpus was the greatest climate ever except for those rare ice storms when he would say, "I did not move far enough south." Of course in Te Anau the scenario would mean that it would get too hot for someone? because it wasnt cold enough? (Now the lady on the tour said that it rained twice as much on the Fiordland Park side of the Lake than in town ... that might not mean a lot when it rains 4 - 8 meters a year in Fiordland! Of course, another of the tour chicks said, "oh, looks like we arent going to hit it," in a regretful way. "hit what?" i ask, and she replies "it was supposed to get to 20 C today.") So if someone wanted to live in the coldest place ever, they should just live in Gunnison (or Antartica!) and be done with it!

They also told us about how they are trying to rescue some of the indigenous birds, by taking the eggs and raising them to adolescence in captivity and then placing them on small islands in NZ that are free of the stouts and possums that eat the eggs, hoping to regenerate the species on these small islands naturally after that point.

Another great thing about Te Anau (and Wanaka), is that the far side of the Lake is all protected, (like in Wanaka, but not in Queenstown), which is super nice, because that means you are never looking across the water at somebody else's house/compound...just the natural beauty of Fiordland (in Te Anau) or Mt Aspiring Nat Park (in Wanaka).

So again, after uploading a zillion pictures and bloging, I rush out to the first DOC campsite towards the park. (It is more fun to stay in these rustic campgrounds than in the developed campervan parks -- much more like camping out, except that there is an outhouse and picnic tables, etc.) It is called Murry Creek, and is on the shore of the Lake Te Anau. Now seeing as it was so pleasant in Town on the Lake, I was surprised to find it blowing a hurricane at this campsite. The windchill was enough to make me sit inside the van for the first time and cook my little meal of instant miso soup, salad and canned Thai coconut curry with the end of the pasta.

The best thing about it blowing a hurricane outside is it kept the damn sandflies away. you know that may be the number one most undesireable feature about New Zealand as opposed to the winding, bumpy roads. I told you about the sandflies in the Monroe Beach walk post (i think), and on the still blue bird morning at Cascade Creek (this morning), I decided to stay in the van and make my breakfast, as there were about 20 of the little bastards clinging to the outside of the windows. That was a good move, for as soon as i opened one of the doors and hopped out, they all swarmed into the vanette. Before I drove away, I spent a few minutes hunting them down and killing them all. The return of Dave the mighty sandfly hunter! They are realtively easy to kill, especially when you can trap them against a window. And though it may be bad dharma to kill other living beings, I kill sandlfies and mosquitoes without any remorse, Dharma be damned!

But I do love New Zealand, and I loved Te Anau. I definitely want to visit Fiordland again, do a cruise (at least the long doubtful sound cruise) and some of the multi-day tramps in the Park here. The only thing that I dont like about it are the damn Sand FLies!!

So tomorrow (wednesday 19 November) I am off back to Queenstown to see the actual town and hang out with Peggy for a day -- getting me closer to Christchurch which I fly out of on Friday (21 November) night!! Ah the end of my New Zealand trip is in site -- boo hoo! =( !!

Until next time, Newo Out.