The ancient old man on the wall

Cheers everyone.  I forgot to mention in my previous post… well, many things actually.  I was very rushed because of the confines of the internet café.  Some things of interest that I shain’t elaborate on:

- learning to read road maps

- almost running out of gas coming in to Dunedin

- the difference between actually almost running out of gas and just thinking you’re almost running out of gas

- Tuesday night Dunedin nightlife (or lack thereof) OR weird bartenders

- A very excellent hostel entitled The Manor House

So, getting back to my original point, I forgot to mention that we have a new member of the road trip: Flat Stanley!  Stanley must have stowed away in my road atlas back in Wellington, being that he’s so thin and flat.  We didn’t discover him until pulling out the atlas to begin the road trip in Christchurch, so now he’s a regular part of are adventures.  If yo

u read Sarah’s blog, you already know these things.  If not, you should:

http://sarahabroad09.blogspot.com/

After the internet café we had the BEST PANCAKES EVER.  I mean, they were really quite good.  Blueberry pancake topped with yogurt and fruit topped with another blueberry pancake with the center cut out allowing easy access to the fruitgurt.  Delicious.

Then we got horribly lost.

People with confidence make everything sound so easy, and the lady who gave us directions to the Tunnel Beach Walk was Confidence Man #1, if you know what I mean.  So we cheerily and naively skipped back to the car only to find ourselves amongst roads that change name and directions every 20 meters and aren’t labeled on any maps we had.  Frustrating, to say the least.  Also: hilarious. 

Eventually we pulled through and it was entirely worth it because the Tunnel Beach Walk turned out to be the Tunnel Beach Gorgeousness and Elegant Ferocity of Nature Walk.  It was striking.  A lonely little beach with HUGE cliff walls on all sides and raging waves coming in.  We even found a penguin nursing its young in a little cave.  A choice out of the way cove.  Oh and then, after getting back on top of the cliffs (you had to descend through a tunnel to get to the beach) we went out a this peninsula type deal that was actually the top of a arc of rock jutting over the water.  It was all very exciting.

Getting out of town was amazingly easy, since we were already out of town and the walk started about 100 meters from the scenic highway, which we road for about 40 minutes until it connected with the real highway in Waihola.  We stopped at a tiny gas station for relieving and refreshing, noticed the ancient old man on the wall of the station, then got back on Highway 1 South for Invercargill. 

The road actually splits into another scenic route through the Catlins, which we didn’t have time to take… so we followed the normal highway inland to the town of Gore and the largest trout in New Zealand.  After getting Subway we drove the last 45 minutes south again to our hostel in Invercargill.  The only town more southern than this is the dilapidated tiny Bluff, old whaler’s colony and departing point for the Stewart Island Ferry, which we’ll be getting on tomorrow.

I’m writing this post in Word not knowing when I’ll actually be able to post it, so hopefully it isn’t too outdated.  But it’s bedtime here at the Kackling Kea.