Day Eleven - Lake Te Anau

December 21 - We got a bit of a slow start out of Wanaka today (which was nice) and drove to lake Te Anau, which was about four hours away. We planned on making just a short stop in Lake Te Anau on our way to Fjordland, where we thought we would be spending a couple of days, but as we were having lunch in Lake Te Anau we were told that unless we wanted to stay in a backpackers hotel (no way) that we would have to stay in Lake Te Anau. So after lunch we went and bought tickets for the excursions that we wanted to do, and we headed out to find out hotel. We ended up finding a really cute hotel, right next to the lake, which was really nice. We have really done a good job of getting nice hotels. So by that time it was about 5:30, and our excursion was at 8:30, so we had a couple of hours to relax.

So at 8:30 we were on a boat, heading out across the lake to the Glow Worm caves, something that I had always wanted to do. It was a nice ride across the lake, and the Glow Worm caves were just breathtaking. The caves are basically comprised of great chasms in the side of a mountain created by flowing water, which has worked it's way through the caves, and continues to do so, so we were in boats half of the time inside of the caves, which was really neat. Once we were fairly deep into the caves they put us in one last boat and they took us in complete blackness to this area of the caves where there was this beautiful blue light shining from the ceiling of the caves, at times was only about two feet above our heads. The glowing blue lights were the glow worms, and it was just amazing, it felt like we were looking at a little city in the middle of this dark mountain. It was such a beautiful experience, something I will remember for the rest of my life. After we got out of the caves, it was about 10pm, so we boarded the boat and made the journey back. We had walked to the excursion center, and we returned, it had started to rain. We had brought our umbrellas with us, but it was still pretty chilly, so we ended up running most of the way back to the hotel, laughing most of the way. It was a great day.

On to Fjordland tomorrow!!