Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Fiordland
We're in Te Anau and we'll be picked up shortly for our next tour.
Yesterday we took a walk in the woods on the Kepler Track. It was mostly through a beech forest with lots of mosses and mushrooms, and some very cool bird sounds. There were some bogs we walked across also. They have these huts in the national parks here so you don't have to take your tent or stove -- but you have to get reservations, especially for the Milford Track, on July 1 for the following year.
Then we went on a tour of the Te Anau Glowworm Caves. After a short boat ride across the lake, we went into a much more tourist-friendly cave than the one in Fiji. Part of it was on little boats that were propelled by the guide pulling on ropes attached to the ceiling of the cave. There were lots of glowworms in the cave -- some of it looked like Magellanic Clouds. It seems that most of the worms had a glow around their light other than the one I was looking directly at -- I guess that's how eyes work.
We went to a Chinese restaurant, which was all good, and all different. The shredded duck soup was very thick and gummy and delicious, the black pepper venison (from the New Zealand Taste category of the menu) was delightfully tender and tasty, and the scallops were served with the part of the scallop you don't get in the US, the part which surrounds the muscle. You know that little round muscle in a mussel? That's the part of a scallop you usually get -- there's much more than that that you don't.
Yesterday we took a walk in the woods on the Kepler Track. It was mostly through a beech forest with lots of mosses and mushrooms, and some very cool bird sounds. There were some bogs we walked across also. They have these huts in the national parks here so you don't have to take your tent or stove -- but you have to get reservations, especially for the Milford Track, on July 1 for the following year.
Then we went on a tour of the Te Anau Glowworm Caves. After a short boat ride across the lake, we went into a much more tourist-friendly cave than the one in Fiji. Part of it was on little boats that were propelled by the guide pulling on ropes attached to the ceiling of the cave. There were lots of glowworms in the cave -- some of it looked like Magellanic Clouds. It seems that most of the worms had a glow around their light other than the one I was looking directly at -- I guess that's how eyes work.
We went to a Chinese restaurant, which was all good, and all different. The shredded duck soup was very thick and gummy and delicious, the black pepper venison (from the New Zealand Taste category of the menu) was delightfully tender and tasty, and the scallops were served with the part of the scallop you don't get in the US, the part which surrounds the muscle. You know that little round muscle in a mussel? That's the part of a scallop you usually get -- there's much more than that that you don't.
