We had a 3rd excursion from Te Anau today, this one a half day to see the glowworm caves. Glowworms are found mostly in NZ and parts of Australia. The worms use a blue glow to attract their prey that then get caught in sticky strands. The glowworms are most impressive seen in caves cause of the surrounding darkness.
The visit to Te Anau Glowworm Caves was easy to get to - the departure is right in town. Real NZ organizes the excursion including a 45 minute boat ride across Lake Te Anau to the caves. (Real NZ are the same people that organized our excursion to Doubtful Sound yesterday).
We boarded the boat at 10:15am. There were lots of kids for this excursion, it’s a pretty cool trip for kids (of all ages!). We recognized some tourists from yesterday, it’s common to do multiple excursions here.
The Real NZ folks gave a commentary on the boat ride, parts of it were getting repetitive for us. They’re all very good speakers.
At the caves, we were split into groups of about twelve for the cave tour itself. We entered the cave, walking along a metal boardwalk. The cave is very young (relatively), only about 12,000 years, and so the stalagmites are only a few cm long. There was water dripping down in places, and it’s about 12C in the caves. We wore our rain jackets and base layers.
The lighting gets progressively dimmer as we got further into the cave. It’s designed to allow our eyes to slowly adjust to the dark, to maximize the glowworm experience.
We boarded a small boat with a bench down the middle, six on each side facing outwards. Our guide then turned off the remaining lights and we proceeded in the darkness.
It’s almost like a Disney ride, the way the boat bumped along the sides as we moved forward slowly. Then we saw the glowworms! They’re in bunches, looking like stars or LED Christmas tree lights, except it’s natural. It was really cool. The highlight is a 4’x8’ grouping that seemed like it was only a couple feet above our head, like I could reach out and touch them. The guide manoeuvred the boat so everyone had a good view.
We returned back in the dark to the starting point, where the next group of twelve were waiting. We swapped places and then retraced our steps down the boardwalk to exit the caves.
The actual viewing was only about 10 minutes, but it was more than enough. It makes sense to do it by boat, so that people aren’t stumbling around in the dark, and they keep moving. Cameras aren’t allowed in the caves, although even if they were, there’s nothing that is photographable. Overall it was a really cool excursion, something neither of us had seen before.
We returned by boat to Te Anau, and went for lunch. Heather had noticed a little cafe previously that looked interesting. Split a pizza and Greek salad, both were tasty.
The rest of the day we relaxed back at our bnb, going through our pics from the past few days and updating our blog.
Had dinner at The Fat Duck again, it was good. Tomorrow we were back on the road, so had an early night.
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