Jack Frost

Oh yeah, I was right. It was indeed one of the colder nights of our trip, and to make things worse we had parked up in amongst the trees so the plan to lie-in and let the sun warm us up back-fired as it could even reach us. Oh well, never mind. And there was no heater to switch on (no plug point in the very basic DOC campsite) so it was on with the 5 layers and out for a jog amongst the frosty grass to warm up. It was a great place to stay, with lots of little secluded areas all tucked away in the trees or down by the stream. As we had had a nice lie-in it was later than normal by the time we left. I forgot to mention in my last post that we actually found a (pretty expensive by New Zealand standard but actually still cheaper than UK) petrol pump that did self-serve so we topped up with $20 to make sure that we got back to Te Anau safely. So unfortunately (for you readers out there) there is no adventure where we ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. Sorry.

See? Told you it was frosty

The planned drive that day was to head through Te Anau (and fill up properly with petrol) and get as far as Invercargill in the south. It wasn’t long before we were pulling into the Mobil station in Te Anau, and the return journey from Milford Sound had been just as impressive as the one to get there. I had seen in one of the guidebooks that there was a free bird sanctuary in Te Anau, one that we had missed when we stayed there a couple of days ago. We found it just out of town and parked up. There was the usual Donations Box if we were feeling flush, but no cars in the car park. And there were no birds either. We didn’t know if they moved them somewhere in the winter or what, but as we were turning to leave we saw a couple of chubby Pukeko (I can’t remember the real term but they looked basically like fat Pukekos) wandering round in the background. We didn’t leave a donation.

We took the Southern Scenic Route rather than the highways to get us down to Invercargill. With a name like that you just have to check it out! And it was just that. A beautifully scenic route through the mountains and plains to get to the south west coastline. We managed to stop off at Monkey Island and admire a fantastic little beach with mountains all along the horizon and the sun glinting off the calm ocean. We passed a few little villages on the outskirts of town before we finally made it into Invercargill. It felt like many other smallish towns in New Zealand – everything on one main road and with houses off behind the commercial buildings, mainly car and tractor show-rooms down this way. As we drove down the two-lane road through the town we noticed a number of people lining the streets with coloured ribbons. We knew nothing of what was going on but it felt like we were returning heroes as the numbers built up on either side of the road and we carried on driving through, tempted to wave and be part of the parade but eventually just watched in silence.

Monkey Island

The campsite was cheap and cheerful, which is a norm for the south island thankfully, and we made full use of the facilities by sticking a wash on straight away to get rid of the smell of smoke from our fire from the previous night. Apparently it had been -6^o C that morning, but they must be over-egging the pudding for dramatic effect. Surely.