Te Anau to Dunedin

Packed up and on the road again just after 9 am, travel coffees safely stashed. Made a quick stop at a souvenir shop in Te Anau for postcards.

Above: ootw shot of the icing-sugar sprinkling of snow freshly fallen overnight - in mid-summer!!  Below - finally, clear skies.

Got stuck in slow moving traffic.  The hold-up?  A moving house!  Not an unusual sight in NZ, but very interesting for my parents to see this interesting way of relocating.

On the way to Dunedin we decided to detour from our planned itinerary in order to head south to Invercargill, southernmost and westernmost city in NZ.  We didn't find anything particularly special there except a Subway for lunch and the most atrocious weather - strong winds and then heavy rain followed by a brief hail shower.  It didn't last long though and then there was a bit of sun again!

We continued south on Highway 1 to one of the world's southernmost settlements, Bluff, which is colloquially accepted as being NZ's most southern point (although Slope Point is actually further south) - as in the expression 'From Cape Reinga to The Bluff'. Again, other than its claim to fame and a cute little lighthouse it was really nothing special to see - in fact it was quite run down and just a little bit shabby. 

This was about all there was to see in Bluff...

So having been there and done that we turned around and started our northern return via Balclutha where we stopped to look at the interesting concrete Road Bridge (built 1935) which spans the Clutha River, the largest in NZ volume-wise.  Had barely finished looking around before the rain came bucketing down again. 

Arrived in Dunedin mid-afternoon where we'd booked a night in a bach at Broad Bay. Mom and Dad were not impressed with our booking but Nick and I thought the tree-house accommodation rather fabulous! We hadn't particularly catered anything for tea so popped out in the hopes of finding a fish and chip shop (actually in the hopes of finding any shop at all on the peninsula); drove to Portobello and stumbled across Ric's Galley which was actually voted the best chip shop from Timaru to Bluff for 2011! They were pretty good along with the delicious fish sticks but we still think our Timaru chips are better.  So cold again that we had TWO fires going.  The house was built in such an interesting way over about five split levels with every room (including the bathroom) having two doorways, so you could do a circular route through the house upstairs and downstairs.  All very confusing and very cold with a double volume high ceiling in the lounge where Nick and I slept on mattrasses in our sleeping bags.  Mom and Dad upstairs had to close their door to keep the heat out!

First glimpse of the house tucked in the trees - access through the woods via a VERY steep driveway.  But look at the view over the bay across to Dunedin city!