Gateway to Fiordland — Milford Sound, glowworm caves, and the Kepler Track
Te Anau is the base for exploring Fiordland National Park — a World Heritage wilderness covering a quarter of a million hectares of fjords, ancient beech forests, and waterfalls fed by New Zealand's highest rainfall. The town sits on the eastern shore of Lake Te Anau (the South Island's largest lake), with Milford Sound just 119km away along one of the world's most dramatic road journeys. Below the town, glowworm caves accessible only by boat contain a labyrinthine network of limestone chambers studded with the bioluminescent larvae of Arachnocampa luminosa. The Kepler, Milford, and Routeburn…
Fiordland was the last major region of New Zealand to be explored by Europeans — its sheer inaccessibility (no road to Milford Sound until 1953) kept it almost entirely wild until the 20th century. The Māori name 'Te Ana-au' means 'the cave of swirling water,' referencing the glowworm caves beneath the lake. Donald Sutherland, one of the first European settlers in Fiordland, discovered Milford Sound in 1877 and spent years living there as a hermit before guiding the first tourists in the 1880s. The Milford Track — opened in 1888 — was called 'the finest walk in the world' by the London Specta…