Just typing this in a small campsite just outside of Invercargill on the very South of the South Island. Yes, I’m way behind on any form of blogging but time just seems to fly by. We left the fantastic house of Ciara’s relatives on Monday and have been travelling down through Dunedin, and the Catlins on the South East of the South Island. We’re just outside Invercargill (about 30km towards Queenstown), and we are heading to Stewart Island for two or three nights which we’re really looking forward to.
We probably won’t do too much there but as bizarre it may seem to everyone doing they’re 9-5, we’re quite looking forward to a break from moving on constantly. We’re getting a bit “fed up” of seeing the next ‘great waterfall’ you should see, or yet another place to see seals (these were on our regular walk in Wellington) etc. When we get back onto the Mainland (which the South Island is referred to), we’re going to head back up to the Queenstown / Wanaka area to do some activities, then if all goes well, we’ve sorted out at least a couple of weeks volunteering in exchange for accommodation in Wanaka. Although the work may be quite mundane we’re really looking forward to being based in one spot, and our favourite spot for a wee while. The owner may want some help in photography or marketing as well. We’ll wait to see if it comes off, then we’ll post a link to the place – it’s pretty stunning.
As always, we think it’s worth spending a bit of money when in places to have the odd drink so you can see what it’s really like. Tonight we went to the pub that runs the small campsite to find that it has ‘toss the boss’ as a form of happy hour on a Friday – you order your drinks, then a coin is tossed to see if you pay. The wine wasn’t, but my large beer was free. We thought that was great, then some guy walked into the bar with a fresh crayfish on his arm, up for raffle. Although the locals said it wasn’t the biggest one, this was no normal crayfish. It was grabbing onto his arm (with some force going by his comments), and the bloody thing would have been almost as long as my arm if it’s tail was stretched out……we never entered the raffle – we figured we wouldn’t have had a pot big enough to cook the bloody thing in anyway! Aaaah…welcome to Southland.