Easter Break: Jetboating to Glowworms

After a much-needed morning yoga session we took off from Invercargill towards Te Anau. The scenery became increasingly gorgeous as we left southern Otago and made our way towards the Fjordland National Park, where Te Anau is situated on the edge. Broad pastures were filled with grazing sheep. Foothills covered in scrub stand in the shadows of tall, treeless mountains. Bright blue mountain streams rushed down from the mountain forests. It was absolutely gorgeous to drive north through the island with the Otago plains to the east and the mountains of Fjordland rising to the west. We stopped at Lake Manapouri for a group photo op on its rocky beach before going on to Te Anau. We stayed at a really nice backpackers there that was on the lake shore; the girls had a room to ourselves and we even had our own bathroom and kitchen! We had a lakeside lunch, soaking up the rays of sunshine and watching the platoons of sailboats drifting across the blue surface of Lake Te Anau. Tall mountains reached out of the calm lake, sunlight illuminating their forested slopes underneath the clear blue sky. The town had a lazy feeling to it that was refreshing after being in a bustling college town for so long. After a walk along the lake shore we took a jet boat cruise on Lake Manapouri on a friend's boat.

Shaffer and I almost falling off the back of the jet boat

The lake was even more majestic from an on-the-water view. He cruised us around the lake, weaving among the islands set around its edges and took us to a small cove where there we could see a waterfall hidden in the mountainside. We took a short tramp through the underbrush around the cove- it was like a tropical forest with its dense, green growth. It seemed like a dinosaur was going to poke its head out behind one of the giant ferns or something. On the ride back Megan and Pete went water skiing in the freezing water.

Leslie and I enjoying the sunshine on the lake

At dusk we boarded a small yacht to go to the Te Anau-au Glowworm Caves. A few stars were starting to appear in the purple-tinged charcoal sky. The islands that we passed were just dark shapes set against the darker mountains surrounding the lake. The previous days' rain had swollen the stream running through the caves to a thunderous rush of water. Its roar was strong in our ears as we walked along the wooden platforms built inside the caves' walls. There were a few glowworms on the ceiling on our walk through the cave towards the main glowworm cavern, unobtrusively stuck to the ceiling.

(Not my photo...but pretty eh?)

We passed a torrential waterfall and got into the small wooden boat on a quiet pool. As our guide began paddling us into the darkness of the cavern the sound of the stream became fainter. No artificial light was brought with us as we were steered blindly through the dark, silent cavern. The stillness was broken only by the sound of the boat bumping into the rocky walls as the darkness became less oppressive while the number of glowworms increased. Patches of glowworms covered the ceiling, their light turquoise color providing the only illumination in the cavern 30 meters beneath the earth's surface. They looked like stars covering the cave's ceiling or blue sparkles strewn across the rock's surface. Or they could have been pinholes stuck through the rock to reveal a luminescing interior. The glowworms bioluminesce to attract prey into their sticky "hunting" lines. The lines dangle down from the ceiling, composed on their venomous saliva, invisible in the darkness. When light is shone on them they look like minuscule strands of pearls. The thunderous sound of the stream heralded our return to the lightened passages as we departed the unearthly world of the glowworms into the equally magnificant star-filled nighttime sky.