December 11

Te Ana-au Glow Worm Cave

At breakfast, I met a couple of Australians who were planning a trip to the US and Canada to do some kayaking. I told them that east Tennessee and western North Carolina are great places for year-round kayaking. They would be spending most of their time in the west, though.

It was rainy today. After breakfast, I went to the DOC Visitor's Center to check in for the Milford and Routeburn tracks and to pick up my tickets. I also bought a map and some patches, and then went to the nearby wildlife park, where there was a variety of birds in cages, including a Takehe, a big blue flightless bird thought to be extinct until one was found in 1948. I then took a walk along the lake in the light rain. Mountains were visible in the distance, through the clouds, and palm trees and yellow flowers lined the near shore.

I got a ticket for the Te Ana-au glow-worm cave, and bought some supplies for the Milford Track and my dinner. I had lunch at the Jailhouse Cafe, which has good food at reasonable prices. I had salmon quiche with a huge slice of boysenberry cheesecake. Deserts were good in New Zealand, and reasonably priced.

At 2 PM, I got the boat to the glow worm cave. It is a 2 1/2 hour trip, including a half hour boat ride 16 km up Lake Te Anau and then back again. The boat was full of Japanese tourists, who are very common in New Zealand. About half the time at the cave is actually spent in the visitor's center waiting for other groups to go through in the little boats. When our group entered, we walked a short way into the entrance , on a platform above the "rushing water" for which Te Ana-au cave is named. Both Lake Te Anau and the town get their names from this cave. Then we boarded boats for a short ride upstream, pulled along an overhead chain by the guide. We got off at another platform in the "Cathedral", the cave's highest room, and walked a short way past a waterfall to a second boat.

Some glow worms were visible all from the start, but here, there were many more, as the boat was pulled along a chain into the dark glow-worm grotto. Glow worms shine a steady blue-green light, like little stars. The light attracts flying insects which wash into the cave, and the worms then trap them in sticky strands hanging down, so they can be eaten. The adult glow worms are a flying insect which has no digestive system and lives only long enough to mate. Often, they fly into traps of other glow worms and are eaten. The glow worm grotto had many big constellations of glow worms, and once, we pulled up for a close-up look. The tour was rather short, but it was interesting to see the glow worms. The cave only had one stalactite, a tiny one along the entrance passage.

Afterward, I did more grocery shopping. I heard a song on the radio that I had heard a bell tower playing in Kathmandu last year. I had thought it was Nepali, but the words sounded Japanese. It was pretty, and I was hoping the radio would identify it. The song would remain a mystery.^*

There was a nice black and white cat at the hostel, and I sat with it for a while in the common room. While fixing dinner, I heard a weather forecast on TV. It didn't look too promising for the coming days, but might clear up by the weekend, when I arrived at Milford Sound. I was hoping it would clear up earlier, for when I crossed the pass on the Milford Track.

While eating dinner, I watched a TV show on cooking haggis, a Scottish specialty cooked inside a sheep stomach. After dinner, I walked downtown for an ice cream cone, and returned to the hostel to pack for my trek. A documentary about the Beatles was on TV.

Copyright Scott A. Yost, 1996. All rights reserved.