New Zealand - Roadtrippin'

We had a brainwave, instead of paying a fortune to take the bus to our next stop Dunedin we discovered that some car rental companies need cars moving from one town to another i.e Queenstown to Dunedin for really cheap rates and so our road trip was born.

We headed initially down to the very south of the South Island - Invercargill from which we would drive the coastal road through The Catlins to our final destination of Dunedin. Driving in New Zealand is so easy, there is hardly any other traffic, all the roads have 100 km speed limits so its a case of pointing the nose in the right direction and sitting pretty. Ofcourse, no road trip is complete without a soundtrack and this is where we fell short. The car had the worst radio ever which just refused to pick up any signal despite our constant efforts but more about that later.

Invercargill

We arrived in Invercargill without any real expectations and that was a good thing as there is literally absolutely nothing to do at all. We checked into a nice hostel (about the only thing going for it) and headed to the tourist information centre with the expectation of being dazzled with a list of "must see's" - no such luck. The highlight of our afternoon was chancing upon a music shop on Invercargill High St where we raided the bargain bucket and walked out rather, worryingly with Destiny's Child - all 16 Hit Singles...? Accepting that Invercargill was dull by foot we drove down to the most southerly point of the South Island just because we could really which was Ok. I'm pretty sure Invercargill has an 8pm curfew that we weren't briefed about, as we ventured out that evening in the hope of a few beers and the place was deserted - just like that film 28 days later. We ended up in the local multiplex watching Jackass 2 followed by an early night.

Most southern point of the South Island

We checked out the following morning and armed with Beyonce and the girls headed for The Catlins coastal road en route to Dunedin. In a complete twist of irony it ended up taking us 45 mins to get out of Invercargill (and I wasn't even map reading)

The Catlins

We had a great day driving The Catlins and taking in the awesome scenery. There are about 8 or 9 suggested tourist spots to visit along the way including small secluded beaches popular with Sealions, numerous bays and ever popular rock formations. It was a pretty long day on the road and to honest we both got abit sick of listening to the same 16 Destiny Child tracks despite putting the CD on random hoping that the change of track order would help - it didn't.

Sealions at The Catlins

Dunedin

Dunedin, the South Islands second largest city after Christchurch brought hope of some action and didn't let us down - I really liked it.

It poured down the whole of our first day but fear not we had a chocolate and beer extravaganza planned. Dunedin is home to both Cadbury World and Speight's brewery which both run very agreeable tours to cater for the hungry and thirsty backpacker community - the promise of free chocolate & beer - where do we sign?

We kicked off with Cadbury World a proper Charlie and The Chocolate Factory experience. We saw huge vats of steaming chocolate, easter eggs being moulded and chocolate bars flying in all manner of directions on conveyor belts. Free chocolate was hanged out at regular intervals so we concluded the tour with our little plastic bags full to bursting.

Speight's Brewery was a similar affair (in the sense that it was also a tour) One of the largest independent breweries in New Zealand and "Pride of the South" We were shown round by a very charismatic fella who looked like he had enjoyed a few Speight's in his time for an hours long insight to the brewing process. This was all well and good but the real deal breaker of the Speight's tour is a visit to the tasting room - and boy were we thirsty after all that chocolate. To cut a long story short and with little surprise we both discovered that Speight's was pretty awesome stuff and our short teasing taster session was followed by an evening in the Speight's pub next door getting pretty familiar with the bottom of empty pint classes.

Getting stuck in at Speight's

Excellent news - Speight's doesn't give you a hangover so we were up bright as buttons the next morning for our Eco-Tour of the Peninsula. First stop - Royal Albatross which I was surprised to learn was a bird and not a pig liked animal... They look like really big sea gulls and to give you some perspective as to size they can be up to 1.8 meters from beak to the tip of their tail and have a wing span of over 3 meters - impressive stuff. We piled back in the bus and headed for a private nature reserve where we got up close and personal with wild sealions and seals on the beach. The sealions where all sleeping so they didn't provide too much action but the seals did plenty of things that made us all go Aahhhh. The highlight in my opinion though were the yellow eyed penguins. Just was the sun is going down they all come in from the sea to kip in the nests they have made on the banks of beach. They are very shy creatures but if you keep really still they can get pretty close as they wander past.

Yellow eyed Penguins

Seals

Our next stop - Milford Sound