Te Anau is our next destination and is often considered the walking capital of New Zealand. Many of the iconic walking tracks – the Kepler Track, the Milford Track and the Routeburn Track. However, given that these take anything between three and five days to do, there is no danger of us being found on them. We do, however, have four days in Te Anau, so we should be able to get a taste for the area. The drive to Te Anau was a beautiful one and we took an alternative route to Queenstown via the Crown Range. This brought us in on a steep descent with stunning views over the valley and then back onto the main State Highway.
We arrived in Te Anau around lunchtime and were able to check in early at our B&B. After a suitable break we went for a walk into town to book some trips for the next couple of days. Because of heavy rain the road to Milford Sound was closed today due to the avalanche risk caused by the rain and is unlikely to open until midday tomorrow, so we have booked trips which go elsewhere!
After booking our ‘entertainment’ we walked on round the shores of the lake to the Te Anau bird sanctuary. The stars of this sanctuary are two takahē. These birds were first discovered by Europeans in 1847, but only four specimens were ever collected and the when the last one of these was found in 1898 they couldn’t find any more and assumed them to be extinct. They were dramatically rediscovered in 1948 in the Murchison Mountains by Te Anau. The population is now carefully managed and protected by the New Zealand Department of Conservation and various programmes are in place to re-introduce them around New Zealand. However, there is a long way to go as the population still only numbers around 300 birds and there are numerous predators of these essentially sedentary and flightless birds.
