Te Anau

Rainbow over Lake Te Anaua

Rainbow Reach

Woke to sunshine, despite forecast rain. That was to come later. At breakfast time, John photographed a rainbow over Lake Te Anau, which was a nice prelude to our planned walk, starting at Rainbow Reach. This walk was a short section of the Kepler Track, one of several popular walking tracks through the otherwise inaccessible mountains and forests around Te Anau.  To walk the entire Kepler Track, a circular walk over the Kepler mountains, takes 3 or 4 days, camping or staying in one of the huts provided on the track. Our walk was a 6km stretch of the track, starting at Rainbow Reach, a suspension bridge over the river Waiau, following the river for a bit, then winding through beech forest down to the shores of Lake Manipouri. This section of the Waiau river flows from Lake Te Anau into Lake Manipouri and is quite fast flowing. The lower Waiau, on the other hand, which flows out of Lake Manipouri and down to the sea on the south coast (and which we’ll be following tomorrow) is low and slow, since most of the water drains from Lake Manipuri through the power station instead of down the river.

Keplar Track forest walk

View of river Waianu

                  Another enchanting forest walk, with beech leaves raining gently on us whenever there was a gust of wind. At one point, a boardwalk took us to a wetland lookout point, where we looked over a small lake and area of bog, with its own unique ecosystem. The trees were full of bird song – the chimes of the bellbird, which we’ve nicknamed the ‘modem bird’, the croaks, clucks and whistles of the tui, and other chirps that we haven’t yet learned to identify. Aenea got excited when we saw first a NZ robin and then a fantail and then, a few minutes later, we stepped into a glade where a group of fantails were chattering away, flitting to and fro through the trees just close to us.

Wetlands view point

Shallow Bay, Lake Manapouri

We paused on the shores of Lake Manapouri, which was looking brighter today in the sunshine, though we could see that, in the distance, the Doubtful Sound was swathed in cloud and, probably, rain. We retraced our steps back to Rainbow Reach, then headed into Manapouri for a coffee. Not impressed by the Lakeside Café in Manapouri – no carrot cake L By now the forecast rain was beginning to appear so we headed back to Te Anau to catch up on laundry and blog writing.