The Deep (Chilly) South

Stewart Island.

I went to Stewart Island, which is New Zealand's 3rd largest island, and it was raining. The ferry ride over was okay, almost fun. We rented scooters (mopeds) for the afternoon and had some godo, damp fun. Stewart Island only has 27km of road. The next day I was going to go for a half day hike before my afternoon ferry left. So I headed out, but it was raining a little harder, so after 20 minutes, I headed back, bought a piece of really yummy carrot cake and watched Fly Boys at our hostel. And wrung my pants out, since they were literally dripping wet. But it was really pretty. There were constantly rainbows.

Scootering by the chain that connects Stewart Island to the mainland.

The ferry ride back wasn't quite so pleasant, because it was quite windy and quite wavy. Hazel's sister Mary met me in Bluff and I stayed over at her place. It was so nice not to have to cook. And to have dessert that came out of an oven! I looked through her cookbooks for things I could make while travelling, but ended up finding a bunch of things to make when I get home. Then, I spent the next night in Invercargill at her daughter Erin's house. I went to the museum with her and saw the tuataras there. They're living dinosaurs. We had really yummy fish and chips for dinner. It was local blue cod.

In the morning I was back off on the bus to Dunedin along the Southern Scenic Route. We stopped in a few places but it was unbelievably windy! I've never been in such strong wind. You could lean back and be supported by the wind (briefly...). Unfortunately, there were no sea lions or dolphins because of the wind, and the petrified forest at Curio Bay was under water. But the wind was amazing!

No sea lions, lots of wind!

When we arrived in Dunedin, we went off to do a tour of the Speight's brewery. It was quite interesting. At the end, there was beer tasting. Unfortunately, I don't drink beer so I couldn't really appreciate it, or the fact that you could have as much as you wanted in the 15 minutes we were at the tasting bar. They had some interesting brews, though. One was with chocolate (it tasted a bit like cold coffee) and one was with apricots. It did smell like apricots.

In the morning, I did a tour of the Cadbury factory. I've been looking forward to that for a while now. The Cadbury's chocolate here is so much better. I've been eating a lot of it... We got all kinds of samples during the tour. Mmmm...

In the afternoon, I went to the botanical gardens with a couple of friends. There wasn't much in bloom, since it is fall here, but there was a really neat aviary. It had all kinds of birds from the south Pacific. But I left my camera at my hostel!


Pictures to go with my last post:

Queenstown from where some friends did a bungy jump.

Mirror Lakes in Fiordland on the way to Milford Sound.

Waterfalls in Milford Sound.

Haast Pass.