Invercargill

On the Otago Peninsula - a walk around Sandymount...

...even when its overcast it is fabulous scenery

Malcolm on the track...

Malcolm above Lovers Leap on that walk

this is the skull of the plesiosaur found inside the boulder near Katiki

evenings at Brighton Beach

In the Catlins

travelling through the Catlins before the rain started

view from the bus at our park in Invercargill

that's the bus behind the trees at Invercargill

gardens in the old coal mine

I'm sending this from the 6th most interesting thing to visit or do in Invercargill.  It is the place we are camped!  Truly.  I googled what to see and do in Invercargill and no 1 is fly out to Stewart Island (ie leave Invercargill) some of the other options include going to the movies and looking at the water tower.  I have been here once before and it was raining so it's not quite as bad as last time!  But the forecast suggests it is going to rain for the next 10 days  :-(

Before heading this way we spent some more time in Dunedin - went out on the Otago Peninsula again and also went to the Otago Museum where we saw the fossil dinosaur that was in the concretion found at Katiki Bay/Shag Point.  It was a pretty good museum.  We also walked along our beach near Brighton, the weather turned out to be hot and sunny again.

Then we drove via Balclutha through the Catlins but we didn't really stop until we had got to the motor home park (no freedom camping in the Catlins)at Niagara Falls - one of NZ's smallest waterfalls!  Suddenly the fantastic weather disappeared and it started to rain.  Hoping that it was a shower (?!?) we went out to Fossil Bay where the penguin police have put a rope across the beach which prevents you getting onto the petrified wood part of the beach - which is practically all of it.  It is to protect the penguins but it wasn't like that when we were here a few years ago, nor at other places we've been - they usually have signs warning to keep 10 metres away.  Next on the agenda was sitting in the car watching tourists run back in the rain from Slope Point, NZ's furthest point south (on the South Island).  Today we are at the Lignite Pit Scenic Stop- in other words an old open cast coal mine site.  Actually it is quite picturesque even on a grey day.