More on Te Anau

I'm sitting in a cafe in Milford Sound, waiting for the lunch buffet to start, using a dial-up internet booth..  so yes, I've finished the Milford Track, and it was AMAZING, but I don't really have the time to get into that now..  or maybe I will, after lunch!

For now I'm going to write a bit more about Te Anau, which turned out to be a pretty cool place..  After I checked into my room and got set up, I took another walk around town.  It's situated on a lake, beyond which Fiordland National Park begins.  It's a pretty small town, if you can call it that, mostly there as an entry point to the park.  Most of the buildings are situated right on the lake, along with a "downtown" with shops, cafes, a restaurant, hostels, hotels, etc.

It turns out that I was sharing my dorm hostel room with an American from Washington DC named Charlie - who was going to be walking the Milford Track too..  and the way the track is set up and controlled, the 39 people you start walking with is the 39 people you share the huts with along the way, and the same 39 people you finish the track with 4 days later.  He did not have much experience in the way of the hike, so I took him on as my padawan.  We spent some of that day re-packing our packs together, along with a British guy named..  something..  Peter, maybe.  He was quite pleasant and shared stories of his travels through Asia, and tips for the upcoming hike (he was a seasoned hiker, or some such thing).  The fourth guy staying in our room was another British chap - not nearly as pleasant as the other two..  quite annoying, actually.

Anyway, I had a whole day to kill, so I booked a trip to the local glow worm caves.  You get on a boat, which takes you across the lake, to caves in which..  there are glow worms!  You spend maybe 10-15 minutes walking into the cave, then get into another boat, which then takes you to a grotto with a bunch of the glow worms up on the walls.  It was a pretty interesting experience.  Along the way the rangers just can't shut up about the local history, fauna, flora, etc. which was actually pretty cool, no matter how I've worded this sentence.

After the glow worm cave experience, I walked along the lakefront until I reached the bird sanctuary, which contains local birds such as the Kea (a pretty damn smart, comical, and annoying animal).  It's a small free zoo, pretty much.  There's maybe 8-10 cages with various native birds, some of which I saw in the wild on the Milford Track.

Alright, so the lunch buffet seems to have opened up.  I have a scenic cruise booked for about 2 hours from now, so I'm gonna leave you all in suspense while I eat and take in the sights.  I *might* have time to write a bit about the Milford Track from the lodge (a hostel, pretty much), but who knows..  Tomorrow a bus picks me up at 9:30am and takes me to the Divide, where I begin a 32km hike through Fiordland National Park & Mount Aspiring National Park - The Routeburn Track!