Te Anau Travel Guide

Introduction

172km (107 miles) SW of Queenstown; 116km (72 miles) S of Milford Sound; 157km (97 miles) NW of Invercargill

Te Anau is the hub of Fiordland National Park, a magnificent 1.2-million-hectare (3-million-acre) World Heritage Site filled with scenic wonders, serenity, mystery, and some of the best walking tracks in the world. The little resort township is built around the foreshore of Lake Te Anau, the largest of the South Island lakes. It has a permanent population of about 4,000, which swells to over 10,000 in summer. If you're coming to explore Fiordland's waterfalls, virgin forests, mountains, rivers, and lonely fiords, this is the place to base yourself.

Lake Te Anau is a wonder in itself. Its eastern shoreline, where the township is located, is virtually treeless, with about 76 centimeters (30 in.) of annual rainfall, while its western banks are covered in dense forest nurtured by more than 254 centimeters (100 in.) of rain each year. What attracts visitors to New Zealand's...