Day 30   25th Nov 2024

We ended up spending an extra day in Te Anau. Our original plan had been to head back to the Queenstown area today. Maui Campers arranged for a garage in Te Anau to look at our van. So we booked an extra day at the campsite. It gave us an opportunity to catch up with our laundry. It also gave us a more relaxed day. It had been fairly full on most days. A day off, even though it was enforced, was pleasant.

I took the van along to the garage about lunchtime, left it with the garage owner. I went off to have a bite of lunch, when I came back it was fixed. He was disparaging about the quality of the repair that Maui had carried out in Queenstown. We were ready to roll again.

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In the meantime Diane had found that there was a Glow worm Cave on the other side of the lake. She booked us tickets on the evening trip.

The first part of the trip was a cruise across the lake.

When we arrived at the other side, we entered the reception building. Then, they divided us into smaller groups for the tour of the caves.

The caves themselves are very spectacular with an underground river and a stunning waterfall. The caves are geologically speaking, quite young. They were formed about 12,000 years ago.

Having walked through the caves, past the waterfall, we boarded a punt, for the trip to see the glow worms. In the pitch darkness as our eyes gradually became accustomed to the lack of light, the glow worms appeared.

The picture is borrowed from the cave’s website. Unfortunately You can’t just whip out your phone and take a quick snap. Any flash would cause the worms to turn off their glow. It is possible to take a picture, but it requires a very long exposure. I had neither the camera equipment nor the time to do it. Nor probably the patience.

I found it quite meditative looking at the glow worms. It was peaceful in the darkness and silence, drifting along on the punt.

As we were walking back through the caves we saw a rather large eel. I’m not sure what it lived on, glow worms seem the most obvious candidates.

After we left the caves, we waited for the boat to take us back to Te Anau. During this time, we received a presentation about the life of a glow worm.

The glow lights are designed to attract prey. They catch their prey by dangling sticky strings from their bodies. Fairly akin to a spiders web. Glow worms are cannibalistic, they have no qualms about eating another glow worm if it gets too close. Strictly speaking they are actually maggots, rather than worms. On a positive note, they eat Sandflies.

It was a good day. We got our laundry done. The van was fixed. Te Anau is a lovely little town. Diane did some “mindful” knitting. We saw glow worms and finished off with an excellent dinner at the unfortunately named “Thai Anau”