Te Anau & Wanaka

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Ok so here is the rest of what we have done in the past few days. I don't have as many pictures though so hopefully my words can make up for that. And yea it was very windy and cold when we were out at Milford Sound, Kamberly.
The day after our minds were blown by Milford Sound we got a completely different mind blowing experience. We took a tour of the local caves in Te Anau. We had to take a cruise boat out to the caves first of all, which took roughly 20 min and allowed us to take in some more great views of the mountain ranges. The first thing that I noticed about this cave, unlike any other ones I had been in was that there was a good sized stream rushing out the entrance. We had to crouch under a large boulder to get into the cave, where we were greeted with the defening sound of the stream on the cave walls.
Apparently the cave is quite new in terms of caves. It is only about 30 million years old, and is still being carved by the water rushing through it. It's just a baby.
We walked through the cave, via a raised platform over the water, where we encountered a 10 ft cave waterfall! Freaking awesome! As if that wasn't enough we were then herded into a small boat, where our guide took us into a pitch black grotto part of the cave. As the sound of the waterfall faded behind us and as our eyes adjusted to the void, we saw tiny points of greenish light on the ceiling of the cave. Probably a few hundred at the least. These specs of light are called glow worms. Like a firefly they create bioluminecent light from the food they digest which attracts insects such as moths that are in the cave. How do the worms catch them you may ask. What they do is regurgitate small stringy spider web like lines that have droplets of sticky venom on them. Then the worm stays just above its lines to attract bugs with its light into it. It's genius.
So that was way cool. And before the glow worm cave we did a 4 hour hike through a moss covered forest. I have some pictures of that.
I'm running out of time again here. I'll wrap this up. We left Te Anau, unfortunately though, Paul lost his camera. We checked every where we had been thoroughly, but to no avail. Hopefully it turns up though and our hostel will e-mail Paul.
We left Te Anau to Wanaka, which is about 3 hours north of Te Anau. We did some hiking, the usual, but we also went to a place called Puzzle World which consisted of a 3D maze and 4 rooms of illusions. I can't go into detail because of time, but the illusion rooms, especially the room of faces was freaky and cool. You can probably find it on Wikipedia for more info.
We are now in a small village below Mt. Cook/Aoraki. Mt. Cook is the tallest mountain in Oceania, coming in at 3750 meters tall. We also got to see the Tasman Glacier which is not so spectacular because it is melting from the top down, so it is covered in dirt and muddy looking water.
That's it for now, I have 3 min to post pics.

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Photos

Puzzle World!
A hologram of a puffer fish.

Comments

[Mom]

Puzzling
Dearest Danny, I was reading Paul's blog while yours was being sent to me. I started at about 4:30 a.m. (We're you and Paul on the computer at 12:30 a.m.?) Not surprising! What are your sleeping hours and what time do you arise in the a.m.? Your picture of chillin' lambs is so sweet. T I've just read about "Puzzling World" on their website. I'm curious what an entire room of holograms feels like and whether there are life-sized holograms. I'll have to do further research regarding the comparison of Landsborough's puzzles and mazes and his knowledge of same as relative to the San Francisco Exploratorium, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Leaning Tower of Pisa both at the the Morton Grove Illinois YMCA (or JCC) and the one in France. The water that flows down but looks up, seems a familiar science concept. Perhaps I saw something like it at one of the aforementioned museums. I gather that Landsborough's Puzzling World poses the questions but does not readily provide the answers, which is, obviously, quite thought-provoking and great to stimulate conversation. The hunting habits of glow worms is fascinating. How lucky are you to be able to peer into such an amazing world, and aren't we all, to have the brilliance of the natural world and that of human engineering. The log cabin hostel sounds cozy. Are you and Paul feeling cozy and comfortable? Being out in the midsts of the mists and the sounds, the lambs and the lupines, waterfalls and glaciers, mountains and valleys and all of the nature which you have been honored to be amongst, seems to me, would be a most comforting experience. I love you. Mom

[Kam the man]

how does the water run uphill? i tried thinking about it for a while but then my head exploded.