Blogs from Invercargill, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 5

Invercargill November 18, 2008 Traveled a very short distance today, we took our time finishing up the Catlins region. We like this coastal area with the rugged beaches. We took one hike to a couple of waterfalls. The falls weren’t memorable, but the walk through an ancient rimu rainforest was. We had a pleasant lunch in Papatowai and stopped at the Lazy Gypsy, a crazy little shop where the owner makes all kinds of little automata. Not sure if that’s the right word, but he makes little things that move and do strange things when you push a button or turn a crank. I especially liked the “gurgling shells.” You turned a tiny crank and water flowed back and forth from a spiral shell to an abalone shell making a soothing “gurgling” noise. Guess you had ... read more

We arrived in Christchurch on the 20th Oct after our 2 weeks in Fiji and it was cold, well colder than Fiji anyway! We spent our first day van shopping, and after a couple of hours had found the van for us, and she goes by the name of Madge (previous owners had called her Maddy, given that she was a Mazda, but we think Madge is better without being too different!) We didn't stay in Christchurch very long, but we did do most of the 'sights'. The highlight being Fred and Myrtle's Paua shell house displayed at the museum. Fred and Myrtle were a couple who lived in Bluff (South of the South island) and collected and displayed all sorts of stuff including Paua shells in their house (mainly their front room). Their house was ... read more

We had arranged to stay the night with Gail and David, some friends that we’d met in the Cook Islands, in Invercargill. We didn’t need to arrive there until late afternoon so we set off late morning and had a leisurely drive, stopping at photo opportunities and generally going where the mood took us. We stopped for lunch by a beach with rolling waves braved by a few surfers, and spent some time enjoying the fact that we didn’t have to be anywhere else. We spent our time on the north island in a state of panic that there was too much to see and not enough time. When we arrived at the south island we quickly realised that there were more activities to do, but there wasn’t necessarily more to see, so we’d finally managed ... read more

After very little sleep we were awake and out by 8.30. However a few wrong turns around Dunedin we were eventually on our way by 9. We drove along the scenic route towards Invercargill, in the far south of the island. We stopped for lunch here and then carried on all the way up to Queenstown. Now remember when i told you about Mark, Chef Extraordinaire. Turns out something went badly wrong in the cooking process and Dale and Ollie had to suffer the repercussions from Mark as the car turned into some kind of gas chamber, not cool for a long journey. On our arrival into Queenstown, we went ahead and booked the biggest Bungy in the southern Hemisphere before we could change our minds and then went to find a hostel. After checking in ... read more

NZ day 8 Our drive halfway around the bottom of the Island plus an incredibly crazy moment in time The crazy moment was truly a crazy moment in time and truly it felt like I was running with my improbability drive at infinity. But it happened late in the day so you’ll have to wait to hear about it. We began our day leaving Te Anau on what tried to be an early side but turned out more to be about 9:30am. We took the “Southern Scenic Highway” that took us down to the south coast of the south island and over to Invercargill. It seemed in the early parts of our drive that the weather couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to rain or be sunny. This brings us to the first amazing ... read more