Saturday, January 10, 2026
Manapouri to Te Anau
A short, wet bike ride today. We cycled the Lake2Lake trail to Te Anau. This was a fun, rolling gravel route along the river connecting the two lakes.
Te Anau is another beautiful lake. The town is bigger and felt more touristy.
In the afternoon, we took a boat to see a glow worm cave! This was incredible. We journeyed into the caves, and then took a little boat through a cave just full of glow worms. Prior to that, we were given a little presentation about glow worms…they are horrible creatures, like spiders just without a strong moral center. On the whole the thing was super touristy, but worth it.
Afterwards, we went on a walk down to the Te Anau bird sanctuary and saw Takahē! These crazy large, prehistoric looking birds were incredible!
We splurged for a cabin for tonight, tomorrow, and the nex to avoid camping in the rain…very much worth it.
📈 Elevation Profile
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💬 Quick Updates from this day
We made it to Te Anau! Photos don't do it justice, so here's one if the many signs we saw telling us what *not* to do (you also can't camp overnight, fly drones, drink alcohol in public, or litter).
We're in the lake!
Time to see the glow worms!
The Te Anau control point, used to control the amount of water let out of the lake. There's lots of hydrothermal power production here, which drastically changed the rivers. In the 70's they began letting some water flow to but it's let's than a tenth of the original flows.
I told you the Lake 2 Lake trail has great (and hand painted!) signage!!
We go that way!
A wet start to the day