Te Anau

Te Anau, who's pronunciation baffles us still, is totally awesome!  It is about 2 hours South of Queenstown, and is the gateway to Fiordland National Park.  Te Anau the town is small but really cool with some great shops and pubs.  It is right on Lake Te Anau with incredible mountains behind it.  We actually stayed in the much smaller "town" of Manapouri, situated on Lake Manapouri (again with an incredible backdrop).  Most of New Zealand's great walking tracks are around this area and Maegen and I did the last 6 kilometers of the Kepler Track.  The next 7 pictures are from that walk.  Not to focus too heavily on Middle Earth, but the canoeing scene at the end of the Fellowship was filmed on that river, and the forest was used for scenes of Lothlorien.  We had a sweet cabin right across the street from Lake Manapouri.  You could climb up the chimney and poke out the top to get a great view.  We renamed Fraser's Beach, "Viking Beach" for Gunner due to the yellow and purple flowers all over it.  We now have to figure out what tracks we want to make reservations for, and how we are going to explore Doubtful Sound, probably by sea kayak.  It was absolutely beautiful, we had a great weekend.  

Cheers, Johnny