More on the South…

…continuing on our Southern Roadtrip…

day 3: Made our way from Te Anau to Invercargill. Of course, it was a beautiful drive. I think that is something I will miss most about NZ, but that is for another post. When we made it to the southern coastline, we all experienced some shock and awe. I think it sneaked up on all of us (“oh! hey! there’s the ocean!!”) and it was just so pretty- the waves were huge. There was a lookout called “McCracken’s Rest” that we stopped at to take pictures and eat lunch. and we said Hi to Antarctica…

As we were driving further down SH1, we saw a sign:

Monkey Island!? Heck yes we’re stopping there! We had no idea what it was, since it wasn’t in our Lonely Planet books, but since it was only one K down the road we couldn’t pass it up. Turns out the name has nothing to do with monkeys (as expected), but it was an island the Maori would use as a lookout for whales. Its accessible during low tide, but turns into an island during high tide. We had a lot of fun exploring for a bit and ended up doing a little monkey photo shoot too….

Once we got to Invercargill, we went straight through down to BLUFF, which is the southern-most town in NZ. This begins where you should get used to hearing that term a lot. Bluff is known as a seaport, although my dad will be disappointed in that I did not get any famous “Bluff oysters” (Sorry, Dad ). It’s also the point of passage for the ferry to Stewart Island.   We went to the infamous Sterling Point sign, which despite all its notoriety… is not actually the southern-most point of the country. But its still a pretty cool sign!  Also forced our car “Sonny” to drive the steep road up to to Bluff Hill, which had some beautiful 360-degree lookouts.You could even see over to Stewart Island from up there!

That night we stayed at a hostel in Invercargill called “Southern Comfort.” It was near town but just a pretty Victorian house in a neighborhood turned into a hostel. I especially loved the kitchen- wide open ceiling, tall windows, and white cabinets. As was the case at Bob&Maxine’s in Te Anau, we had a whole dorm room to ourselves! We ended up playing (instead of rummy) Scrabble with 2 German guys who were also staying there. Since they were at a slight disadvantage playing with their second language, Grace would help them figure out words if they got stuck. But one of them still ended up winning haha.

Ahh and the next day was one of the best yet…

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~ by Juli on June 22, 2010.