The bottom of the South Island...

According to my trusty map of the World, you can't go much further south on a mainland (apart from South America) than the bottom of NZ's South Island. Antarctica is within spitting distance. Well, as long as you can spit a few thousand miles, but what's that between friends?

We had a few days in Invercargill, which, and I'm paraphrasing the Lonely Planet here, is 'full of chavs in souped up cars and chavettes in souped up hairstyles'. I really don't think it's a bad place at all. Granted, a few of the women here choose to have dodgy bleached blonde hairstyles, and there are a smattering of big-bore exhaust motors, but other than that, it's just a good, honest working-class southern town with a damn fine microbrewery where you can buy great beer in plastic bottles. What more would you want?

My only gripe about Invercargill is the paltry opening hours of some of the tourist attractions. The observatory, for stargazing geeks like me, is open for an hour or so on Wednesday nights only. We happened to be there on Wednesday night, so that's OK. However, the Water Tower, with it's spectacular vista over the town, is open on SUNDAY AFTERNOONS ONLY. Well really. It's hardly worth opening it at all, is it?

Anyways, here a few shots of NZ's most southerly 'city', including Clare having an argument with a sealion, the local park and Cathedral, and the offending water tower in question:

Next stop after Invercargill was Gore, the country music capital of NZ. Right. This place is also a mecca for fishermen, apparently the local Mataura river is world famous for brown trout fishing. So famous, the locals decided to erect a giant statue of a trout in the town square. and I mean giant - here's Clare trying to 'catch' it in her own inimitable style:

We slept the night in an old converted Fire Station (unfortunately there was no pole to shimmy down, boo!), but it was cool nevertheless. As it's out of season here at the moment, we have been in a few hostels recently where we've been the only people there. Hence, me and Clare have got into board games recently. Dingbats and Twenty questions last night, out of interest.

Anyways, we're now on our way to Dunedin, home of Speight's beer and Kiwi Cadbury's chocolate. I can't wait!

-Si