Invercargill

Having packed up our few things from the cabin in Dunedin, we hit the road again, this time for the Top 10 campsite in Invercargill. The journey down was fairly uneventful apart from two things. We stopped in Gore and I bought a new MP3 player which we'll be able to use for music in the car, and then we picked up an American hitchhiker on his way to Invercargill. He has been travelling around staying with people who have registered on Couch Surfing website - I don't know the URL and am not online as I write this, but I'm sure Google can locate the site if you're interested. The basic setup is that if you have a spare room or couch and are willing to let backpackers use it, you register it on the Couch Surfing website and people can arrange to come and stay. Of course you can use it the other way around too, like this guy was doing, for free accomodation and the chance to meet people you might not otherwise meet. It's a much more sociable way of travelling than just staying in campsites and only meeting other tourists. This American guy had just finished a couple of nights' stay with some Maori bloke who taught him lots about Maori culture and also took him snorkelling. That's pretty cool.

Invercargill is much bigger than I expected it to be. For some reason I was under the impression that it was a tiny town but it's actually quite large and sprawling. It has a couple of nice looking main streets and seems to be quite an interesting place, although we won't get the chance to see much of it in our one night here. The weather is great, blue skies and fluffy white clouds, so we made the most of it and headed down to Bluff, the most southerly point of the South Island. I posed for photos by the road sign with worldwide locations and distances (Skry thought it was completely cheesy, and he may be right, but I don't care), and we took a walk up a hill overlooking the lighthouse and what I assume is Stuart Island. It was a steep path and I was out of breath at the top, but it was worth it just to enjoy the view and the sunshine. On the way back from Bluff to the campsite, we called in to a pizza place called Hell Pizza. They have an unusual theme! They also have strange but useful boxes. At the start it looks just like a normal pizza box, but once you've eaten all you want of the pizza inside, you can push out the perforated sections of the box and assemble a coffin for your leftovers!