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Published: January 1st 2007
Te Anou is beautifully situated next to Lake Manapouri and makes a great base for walking and trips to the fiords. It is also quite big so has a choice of eating and drinking establishments.
In the afternoon that I arrived I visited the Department of Conservation visitor centre and visited the glow worm caves. The visitot centre is the main booking office for the many famous walking tracks in the area. The most famous is the Milford Track which has to be booked months in advance as the only accomodation on the track is in the huts and places are very limited. Some tracks are in complete wilderness areas and are pretty extreme. The rainfall in the area is tremendous and I overheard on of the DOC staff explaing the the water levels can quickly rise a number of metres and the you would have to swim parts of the Dusky Track path!
The trip to the glow worm caves was great fun and the little worms make quite a light which is a dazzling shade of blue. The best view of the lights is when you're on the little punt in the pitch black. I don't like
small boats and in the complete dark I was a little scared but it was a fun trip for an afternoon.
I had booked onto the Doubtful Sound trip for the next day and met the mini bus bright and early. We picked up a few more and then headed down to the lake shore. The rival firm's boats looked a bit better but I had gone for the cheaper option, our boat got us there anyway so it was OK. Once on the other side we had a quick look in the DOC visitor centre befor boarding the coach which the first stop being the West Arm power station. This is a little like a villains lair from James Bond, what with it being completely underground.
It was then on to Doubtful Sound which is amazing; nuff said. The eveing was spent in the Redcliffe Cafe which is a great restaurant in Te Anou and I can thoroughly recommend it.
Lord of the rings was on the TV again in the evening, that's two days in a row! I am starting to get sick of it now.
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