Three Days in Invercargill

On Wednesday after a sleep in, we headed out to Bluff in glorious sunshine. We took the obligatory photos at the signpost at the start/end of SH1 and then had lunch at the Drunken Sailor overlooking the signpost. (I did look for the café that Lara ate at but didn’t know the name, so wasn’t very successful in finding it.) We are thoroughly enjoying blue cod while we’re down here. We went up to the Bluff lookout and it was glorious, even though there was some haze out to sea. Back down into the main road and I stopped at a shop that sold everything and bought myself a “Scrapbooker on Board” sticker for my car! Oh we also stopped at the Paua House but the two old people who used to run it have passed away and the grandson didn’t seem particularly interested any more. On the way home we stopped at Pak ‘n Save to buy some groceries and ending up putting back the beef in favour of more blue cod for dinner!

Thursday we headed out to Curio Bay stopping off at Waipapa Point where we saw rare New Zealand (or Hookers) sea lion sleeping on the beach.

On to Slope Point and now we can truly say we’ve been from the northern most point to the southern most point of the South Island!

On to Curio and Porpoise Bays where Adrian saw four Hectors Dolphins in the sea and we all saw a crested penguin at the petrified forests. On the way back to Invercargill, we had to stop because a farmer was crossing a flock of sheep across the road! You see it on the TV but never in real life!

Friday dawned wet and overcast so after a very slow morning, we headed for the Museum. Sorry, Southlanders, but they can learn a lot from Te Papa about museums. The most interesting part was reading about the men who spent time on the Auckland Islands during the war as lookouts. The boys wanted to watch “the World’s Fastest Indian”, but “Mrs Scratchy” at the entrance, after hearing us discuss at length that they could watch it whilst we looked around, half-an-hour later said they couldn’t go in without a parent – we just left. Then we went to the Seriously Good Chocolate Company for a snack before heading to the movies – Happy Feet. After the movie was over, we went to Oreti beach – where Burt Munro raced his bike. What a piece of unspoilt beauty! The clams on the beach were multiple and so interesting – if touched they would usually squirt out water! Of course the seagulls were plentiful too.

And so we’re off to Dunedin on the next part of our trip around the South Island.