Worms of Death!!! and Germans

Man, recapping New Zealand is a hard thing to do, so much to say. Ever since we started planning this trip we were told about the Glow Worms. Supposedly you can see these guys on trails all over NZ, but we didn't. What we DID do however was take a Glow Worm Cave tour in Te Anau. After a boat cruise across a lake, you are hearded into the Glow Worm Cave information center where you watch an informational video. This is where you learn that Glow Worms are essentially radioactive caterpillars the size of a matchstick , who create these "fishing lines" of sticky stuff and place all over their territory. Then they glow in the dark to attract bugs, catch them in the sticky lines, THEN SUCK OUT THEIR INSIDES! If that wasnt crazy enough, in that same video we saw what happens when one glow worm enters anothers turf. FIRST, they give a warning by blinking their "light," THEN they crawl over and the bigger one throws the other off the roof of the cave. IF they survive that and come back for more... the big one EATS the smaller one. You can actually see the light of the little one inside the stomach of the big one and slowly fade out... its crazy! After they pump you up for the impending blood bath, they walk you into the caves (which we learned are a mere 35,000 years old), on a catwalk over a rushing underground river that sounds like a jet engine (AND THEY ALSO DROP THE BOMB THAT YOU CAN'T TAKE PICTURES!!!). After a couple hundred yards you are put into a tiny boat that looked like they must have been the reject units from the Pirate of the Caribbean rides. Once you are in the boat, for some reason that they won't explain, you're not allowed to talk (I think it's because everyone knows it's hard to see in the dark when it's loud). Everywhere you look you see these tiny, and I mean TINY, bluish green dots everywhere. Each glow worm puts off a minimal amount of light, but together it's pretty amazing. It's almost like looking at the stars... until you're hit in the face with a dead moth carcass.

After the glow worm tour, we started on our way to Milford Sound and camped at a spot on Lake Gunn (about 45 Mins north of Milford). The campsite offered nothing other than some toilettes that were glorified out houses. The location of the campground made up for everything though, even in the rain. We parked the van about 10 feet from the waters edge and had the whole lake out of our wind shield. The campground had about 20 other campers in it from all over the world, including some German guys, who were VERY proud to be sausage factory apprentices. We made some soup for dinner, made some ghetto s'mores with bran biscuits (THEY DON'T HAVE GRAHAM CRACKERS IN NZ OR AUS!!) that tasted great and called it a night. Next Stop... MILFORD SOUND!!!