NZ Day 7- Te Anau Glow Worm Caves to Queenstown

I would like to point out that last night's room advertised bunks, a table and a mirror. That write up sold the room short-it also had two chairs!

Today's wake up was a much more reasonable as we didn't need to check in to our glow worm cave tour until 10.  Here is a shot of the boys getting on the boat that took us out to the caves. The crew was a real hoot!

Any tour involving trasportation is an easy win for this crew.

 Gorgeous scenery from the top of the boat.

The tour was fabulous. I will make some comments here specifically about travelling with a child with autism. NZ is known for glow worms and we all wanted to see them. Dark, loud caves are not awesome for BigC. Some tours offer tubing and rafting in dark caves, some tours are are longer than others. We had to choose one that was a compromise.

The tour we chose put us on a 25 boat cruise across gorgeous Lake Te Anau to get to the caves. The tour starts outside with a very thorough information session. We then proceeded in to the caves on foot and about 10 minutes later took a calm 10 minute boat ride to see big clusters of glow worms (no photography inside the caves). It was dark and loud but not scary and BigC coped well by snuggling in to me and getting lots of deep pressure snuggles.

We walked back out of the caves and then got a very informative 5 minute video session about the glow worm life cycle. The whole thing wound down with a 25 minute boat ride back to town.

In my opinion this was an excellent compromise for BigC and for us. The highly stimulating activities were short and manageable while we all still got to see and learn.

 We all had a drink of bath cave water and lake water. I remember when you could drink right out of the lakes at home. It makes me sad that we can't do that anymore.

The WBs on the shores of beautiful like Te Anau.

 Monkey wants to read rather than stare at scenery for half the day. Here is is fascinated by the brochure on glow worms and their life cycle.

Once back in town we headed up to Queenstown where we will stay for 3 nights.

We checked in to our hostel and went for a walk around the downtown area. It's nice to be in a city again!

This came (loudly) rolling down the road...

Our hostel offers free dinner every night as a loss leader at a local restaurant. Tonight was fried rice, which may well be one of BigC's favourite meals. He loved it and we got a lovely walk.

We will be in Queenstown for 3 nights. We have a quiet day around the town planned for tomorrow and we have booked a tour a jet boat ride for the following day.