Clan Haley

Queenstown

Our main plan for Saturday was to pack up and move ourselves a little bit further North to Queenstown. Once we had eaten breakfast and taken down our tent we had one last thing to do in Te Anau. The glowworm caves! This involved a boat ride across lake Te Anau (one of the largest lakes in Oceania covering 344km^2^, having a max depth of 425m and a length of 65km). The tour was pretty cool and involed us climbing our way inside a cave which had been carved out by a river over a few hundred thousand years. As we wound our way up the cave we saw the glowworms, their nets that they use to catch their food and a pretty cool river that was carving out more of the cave. To top it all off we have a pitch black boat ride where we saw hundreds of glowworms. After the tour we had a hot chocolate and learnt a bit more about glowworms, where they live and how the glow. After that we hopped back on the boat back to Te Anau where we had a brief stop at the bird sanctury. They had a couple of breeding Takahe which were once thought to be extinct along with a pair of black teal ducks.

After that we set off on the drive around the mountains to reach Queenstown where we stopped for some rather delicious ice cream. Queenstown is a bit of a thrill seakers paradise with loads of crazy activities from bungee jumping, jet boating and pretty much everything in between. Its also quite pricy and very busy with loads and loads of tourists. The next morning we had a quick coffee before heading up the skyline Gondola to look at the views and have a go at the Luge. It was great fun as we slid our way down their two tracks. We were a bit nervous about how James would find it, but he was super excited by it and loved doing it. After that we had a spot of lunch and did a bit of geocaching in a cool sculpute park. Next we spent a bit of time chilling at a play park on the waters edge. James plucked up the courage to got a little paddle and was loving chasing other kids.

Tomorrow we head towards Wanaka.