Day 53- The road to Te Anau

After waving goodbye to Dunedin, we headed inland to the town of Te Anau. The drive went through rolling hills, with mountains in the background. Te Anau seems to be a relatively unremarkable place, except that it has a population or 3000 people and caters to a half million tourists and travelers per year. The town doesn’t really have anything to distinguish itself, but the surrounding area is quite beautiful. Te Anau is right on the edge of Fjordland national park, NZ’s largest national park. We checked into our accommodation, which were a series of cabins overlooking the mountains. The area was situated on a deer farm, and was thus sparsely inhabited. We saw the sun set over the sound, and watches the stars peek out of the evening sky. I quickly noticed two things- first, there was no noise- no cars, no televisions, and no airplanes. Second- there were no lights. In front of me was a 180 degree field of view, with no headlights, streetlamps, illuminated windows or billboard signs- it was the most uninterrupted view of land at nighttime I have ever seen. We cooked dinner and met a few brits who were following the same route we were, and this is where we hit another astounding coincidence- Dylan met someone from back home who lives 20 minutes away from him, and Kristen found a girl who graduated with her sister and had her father as a professor, and lived in the same small town back in Minnesota! The coincidences that have and continued to follow us throughout the trip are uncanny- it makes one wonder how many chance meetings are missed by deciding to stay at hostel A instead of hostel B. One by one we went to sleep, and I decided to get some reading done. Soon most of the lodge was gone, except for me and a few French people, who invited me to come share a glass of wine and some conversation with them. We talked for well over an hour, and I then retired for the night, but not before one enjoying that spectacular night sky, uninterrupted by humanity.