Day 4, Queenstown > Te Anau, January 13th 2014

Well it was time to leave Queenstown. The cold, wintery, wet conditions made the desire to leave stronger but it's still hard to leave a place like this even in the worst of weather.

The drive from Queenstown to Te Anau is remarkable to say the least. Initially you follow the southern arm of Lake Wakatipu around for 20 - 30ks.

As you get away from the lake you come into prime grazing country.

Last year when we were here we hardly saw any sheep but this year there were thousands of them everywhere.

We decided to go down to Manapori on our way the Te Anau just for a look. The town itself didn't have a lot to offer but it's the gate way to the Doubtful Sound so it sees a lot of tourist traffic. Easy to see why.

We got into Te Anau for lunch so we grabbed a seat at the local steak house. Here's the magnificent 8, oh well, the Magnificent and Jodi.

I'm not big on "look what I'm eating pics" but, get a look at these BBQ pork ribs, I ate them about 1pm and it's now 8.45pm and I'm still not hungry.

We bummed around town looking at all the local tourist trap shops for an hour or so. Last year we found Te Anau reasonably priced but things have changed a little since 2013, I think they may have employed a few marketing managers from Queenstown, as there are not too many bargains to be had here now. We found a brochure on the Glow Worm cave, or as we later found out the Glow Maggots is more precise, so we decided to fill in the rest of the day with a run across the lake and little cave walk. You can't take pics inside the caves so sorry not much to show you guys on that. The scenery on the way there was spectacular as usual, I'll let the pics do the talking but just keep in mind it's 7C.

Well we are going "full tourist" tomorrow and doing the Milford Sound by coach > boat > coach. So get ready for a pic heavy post in 24 hours. I'm just going to slip into a spa and wash off a bit of glow maggot poo, hooroo. Stu