Southern Scenic Route (Dunedin - Invercargill)

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Tuesday was a bit of a bad day. We got up, and it was sunny and nice, and we drove around the Otago Peninsula. We had intended to go to Lanarch Castle and to the Albatross colony. Unfortunately both places charged far more money than we wanted to pay for entry. The drive on the other hand was really nice and scenic.

After a bit of lunch we set out on the "Southern Scenic Route". We had a map with all the interesting places on route marked on it. What wasn't on it were the roads that were sealed and the roads that were unsealed. Unsealed roads suck. The first site we tried to get to we drove for 20km on a gravel track at about 20-30kph before finding a sign saying that it was a further 12km to where we were going. We gave up on that and drove back another 20km further along unfinished roads back to the main route. We then missed the next stop completely somehow. By this point it had clouded over and after another "short" 10km off-road drive we reached Nugget Point, which was lovely, but extremely cold and windy, and it started to rain. We walked along the cliff to the lighthouse and saw a whole load of seals playing on the rocks below us.
We found a nice Christian campsite to stay in, but it was a slightly disappointing day.

Yesterday was much better (for the most part). We stopped off for short walks to 3 different waterfalls in the morning, the most impressive of which was the McLean falls. The sun came out in the afternoon and we only had 8km of unsealed road to drive all day!

We visited Curio Bay which is the site of a fossilised forest which died 180million years ago and is perfectly preserved on the rocks. "It looks like wood, but feels like rock!".

We also went to Waipapa Point which is the site of the worst shipping disaster in Kiwi history. We had heard that there might be rare New Zealand Sealions there, and there were. There were 3 just lying on the beach. The one on its own when we got there was being crept towards by a stupid girl who was choosing to ignore the warnings and advice not to get too close to them. It was only a female, not a 500kg male monster, but nevertheless it'd give a nasty nip. As it rose up and started to give chase, she legged it as fast as her little legs would carry her, and I got a few decent snaps.

So far so good. We were having a lovely day. Unfortunately, having arrived in Invercargill and having spoken to a lovely lady who pointed us to our campsite, we discovered that our cards wouldn't work to let us take out any money. Fearing the worst, we logged onto our online banking site to check out the account, to find that it had disappeared...

Oops.

Anyway, we spent the rest of then night talking to Natwest on the phone to see what had happened and what we could do about it. Seems that our cards may have been compromised due to someone stealing card numbers from a website that we'd both bought something from (dunno which). So Natwest decided to just stop the cards working. The situation is not quite resolved as yet, but it will be, probably. We're gonna get new cards sent somewhere we can get them, and then it should all be OK. It was pretty worrying for a while when we were sitting around waiting for Natwest to open though.

Off to the Glowworm Caves in a bit then Milford Sound tomorrow.