Quiet Te Anau and Majestic Fiordland

Sat. Feb. 26 to Mon. Feb. 28, Staying in Te Anau

This time I've included a small map of the area we're visiting, so you have a better idea of where the heck in New Zealand we're talking about!   Te Anau is in the southwest corner of the South Island, one of the colder and wetter parts of NZ.

A "greenstone" from Arrowtown

View from roadside en route to Arrowtown

We arrived in Te Anau in the late afternoon after driving from Wanaka, through Arrowtown and Queenstown on the way south.  The drive was surprisingly easier than we thought it would be, with only a few hairy moments twisting and turning on 180 degree cliffside turns on the way down to Arrowtown.  But what views on the way!  Arrowtown is an old gold miners town, and they've kept the main street looking as historical as they can.  It's a quaint town, but kind of a tourist trap as well with lots of little shops and restaurants to spend your money in.  We waited a a half hour for our coffees at a French cafe, something we're running into more and more in NZ - long waits for ordered food/drinks.  I think they're having a tough time getting enough workers for restaurants. Anyways, after getting our coffees we spent an hour or so on their river walkway, where I thought I'd found some real NZ greenstones.  Unfortunately I don't think the stones qualify as official "pounamu", a sacred green stone for the Maori culture.

After a quick lunch of Thai curry rice bowls in Queenstown (really yummy), we carried on to Te Anau.  Stayed at another Bella Vista motel there and made a last minute booking for the next day to go on a Milford Sound bus tour and cruise - Barry and I were both tired of being drivers and looked forward to turning off our brains and having someone else take us around to the sights!!

Marian Falls

Mirror Lakes

Ray, our tour guide, and Natalie

A very curious kea bird before Homer Tunnel

Falls in Milford Sound

Sunday - Milford Sound tour. Weather: Mainly cloudy, cool (finally need to wear pants, not shorts!)  Since all the big tour buses that come from Queenstown were full, we ended up getting booked on a local Te Anau tour bus, Fiordland Tours, which hooks up with Mitre Peak Cruises in Milford Sound.  We totally lucked out with this one, as Ray, our tour guide, was so knowledgeable and really cared about having us see all the photo stops on the way.  There were only 7 of us on his small bus, so no waiting for big groups to get one and off at each stop.  The group included 4 fun ladies from Queensland, Australia, who were old school buddies, and one Japanese girl who was a refugee tourist from Christchurch.  We must have made around 9 stops on the way to Milford, including Mirror Lakes, The Chasm falls, and  a coffee stop in Holyford Valley. 
Overall it was a fun tour, and we enjoyed the cruise of Milford Sound.  Again we lucked out as there were maybe 15 of us on the boat cruise, so everyone stayed up top to get the panoramic views of the fiords.  Highlights were definitely the falls, but unfortunately the day was pretty gloomy, so the fiords looked a bit desolate to us, and often in high cloud.

Kepler Track near Te Anau

Monday, Feb 28. Weather: Partly sunny in morning, cloudy afternoon.  Barry and I had a quieter day today, with not much planned in Te Anau. The forecast for the Fiordland National Park area was supposed to be socked in and rainy, so there was no point in doing the Key Summit hike, part of the multiday Routeburn Track.  The point of that hike is to get fantastic views of the area, and there would be no views in the bad weather.  So we did a short portion of the Kepler Track, in the beech forest along Te Anau.  Very pretty forest, but we noticed there were a lot of trees marked with signs that indicated traps nearby.  We started to spot the traps, which were likely for stoat or possums, regarded as major pests in New Zealand.  That's why you'll sometimes see possum fur combined with merino wool in clothing - make some use of the poor pests, I guess.  It's hard getting used to the unique problems they have here with introduced animal species that have wreaked havoc on ecosystems and native birds and animals.  Many of NZ's native birds have no natural predators, so they haven't evolved with any way to protect themselves from excellent predators like the stout (which was brought in to deal with the rabbit overpopulation originally).  And the possum is eating away at native trees.  So in a nutshell, now the Department of Conservation is trying to kill off the stoat and possum populations.