Serendipity
Trip Start
Oct 14, 2005
1
50
71
Trip End
??? ??, 2006
Havelock,
New Zealand
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
So that is how I ended up feeding eels in the middle of a forest at night in Havelock population 500.
I set off in Bob, Mario's car to make the relatively short and simple journey to Nelson, some how, due to dodgy maps, and inadequate navigation on my part, we ended up missing Nelson. We were starting to suspect we might have gone past Nelson when a bus passed us on the other side of the road bearing the destination of Nelson. Hmmm. Examining the map we establish that there are a number of little places between us and Picton. Not wanting to drive all the way to Picton we started to look closely at these one horse towns, eventually we come across Havelock. Havelock was the first place we came across with an information centre, always a good sign, it also had an amusingly altered sign, with some wag replacing the 'l' for a 'c'.
This must have put us in a good mood, and after investigating the access to the Queen Charlotte track at the information site, we decide that it made sense to stay in Havelock and then drive to the Queen Charlotte Track from Havelock.
We end up staying at the Blue Moon Backpackers, which felt like staying in someone's house, with a proper living room, complete with fish tank and comfy sofas. Meeting the owners Dave and his wife, it turns out that they are going to take some of the current guests on a night walk to see the glow worms. It turns out that the forests around Havelock are infested with glow worms, and only Dave knows where to find them, he doesn't keep it as a secret, but the other locals follow his directions and come back still none the wiser. He has been asked to run tours everyday by the local council but he doesn't want to, he just enjoys taking the odd backpacker who is fortunate to stay at his hostel when he is in the mood.
The actual walk was treacherous in places, fortunately the goat that occupied the area had passed away. Once you are deep inside the Havelock hills only the light of the moon, penetrates when we switch off our torches to try and spot the glow worms. At first they were elusive, peering through bushes to glimpse a couple of our illuminating friends. This was just a teaser though, Dave eventually led us through to the jackpot, the money shot, the Santa's grotto of glow worm dens. Surrounded by the silver ferns that are native to NZ hundreds of glow worms spin their tiny little webs, attracting flies and other small insects to their doom with their brightly glowing backsides. It is noted that the hungrier a glow worm is the brighter it glows. This, though, was just the beginning, as Dave led us through more and more densely packed enclaves of glow worms surviving off the moisture from a nearby creek. Which was the habitat of another little treasure of Havelock, the eels. Dave, a couple of years ago, had discovered a couple of eels that had swam up a small waterfall to inhabit the creek that runs through the Havelock hills. Using only a red light he coaxes out the limbless beasts, the biggest being a good 1.5 meters long, with bits of sausage meet. Helping him feed the eels, I inadvertently start a bit of an eel fight, with the big eel not too happy with the small newcomer taking his food. It was after the eel feeding that Dave takes us to the best site for glow worms, so many glow worms in one place cast an eerie green glow over the party. Saving the best for last we head back to the township, after having witnessed the bright lights of Havelock I mused over the relative merits of what we had just experienced compared to a night in Nelson, which by all accounts is a large dull town, much in the same vein as Greymouth and Westport.
A late night Icelandic guest at the backpackers, puts me off the merits of hitch hiking as he had been stuck for the last 5 hours in the middle of nowhere. Finally managing to get a lift of a kind lady, a few hitch hiking horror stories later and I decide to keep it as a last resort, which I'm sure my mum will be pleased to read...
