Greetings from Invercargill

Hello folks! We're in Invercargill right now, stopping for a break at New Zealand's southernmost city between doing a one-night hiking trip on the South Coast Track and taking a leisurely drive along the Catlins Coast eastwards to Dunedin.

Our hike on the south coast track was a grueling state of affairs: 7 hours of hiking each way, with just maybe one hour of total beach walking each way, the rest of it was plodding along tiringly through the forest without a view and a good amount of mud. Glad I had my gaiters. The beach walking was nice though, and the destination, Port Craig Hut, is actually the old school house of the old, short-lived Port Craig, a failed lumber settlement, so that was cool I guess. But doing that hike before trying to do the 10-day Northwest Circuit on Stewart Island was a mistake! We need more recovery time now.

But for various reasons we've decided we don't really want to do the NW Circuit anymore. Too long, too hard, and not that many actual views of the ocean, despite walking the outside of the island the whole time. I do not need more viewless forest walking! And not doing this tramp frees up a lot more time on our trip. And not doing the 10-day circuit has basically eliminated our reason for going to Stewart Island entirely... the cost of transport isn't worth the day trip out there...

So we're going to take our time driving along the southeast coast, camping at a couple spots along the way until we get to Dunedin. In Dunedin, we've got the Speight's Brewery tour and Cadbury chocolate factory tour. Around Dunedin there's a penguin colony we'll try to see, too. Erin's keen on doing this multi-day bike tour out of Dunedin along the Otago Rail way. We'll see!

What about Invercargill? It's alright. :) If you check our Invercargill photo album, you'll see a few things we saw here. We went to the Museum and Art Gallery, and then wandered the adjecent Queen's Park, which contained some botanic gardens, rose gardens, a bird aviary. The museum has a section devoted to Burt Munro, the old kiwi bloke featured in the movie The World's Fastest Indian (he was from around here). So cool!

Before setting off towards Dunedin tomorrow, we're gonna stop in at Bluff, just south of Invercargill, which is a maritimey little town. Should be cool. See you folks again in Dunedin.


South Coast Track Photo Album

Invercargill Photo Album