At last a place with a bath..!!!!!!...not that im unclean but i havent encountered a bath for ages...just showers..... cracking spot here with the sea about 15 yards away, the tide goes out and leaves a stoney sandy beach. We look across the bay towards Dunedin. We are on the Otago Penisular, which has both ocean and bay sides to it...its long and thin and the road in and out clings to the sea,, one blink and the car would be over the edge....not good for me ...

18th November Sunday. Sunny morning left Mannapouri and took the Southern Scenic Route towards Invercargill. Sheep, cows and deer for company on route. Pretty cold and windy, and the rain started to sweep around us on and off. We drove through Invercargill towards whats called The Bluff a promitory kind of finger shaped headland that faces towards Stewart Island and Antartica beyond. The Bluff was rather run down and the wooden houses which would be lovely...

16th 17th November Friday and Saturday Its very easy to loose track of what day it is and as time has moved on its got worse. The drive from Queenstown was about 4 hours to Mannapouri. The scenery was a mix, plenty of farms and a surprising amount of farmed deer. It becomes apparent not many folk live down here and they say 7 sheep to each person in NZ. 19,000 inhabitants in south island out of 4.3 million in all, still not a lot Te Annau was the town closest...

QUEENSTOWN 12, 13, 14, 15 November. We packed up and left Fox Glacier on a sunny morning, andbegan o ne of the best scenic routes of the trip, a kind of scenic overload, how many pretty sights can the mind take in??? It would have been a splendid day to do Fox Glacier but we had doen that in the rain and time on this trip waits for no man……… The road criss-crossed rivers, driving over historic bridges, occasionally it hit back on the ocean...

Leaving ArthursPass Village it was frosty and crisp and sunny, the mountain caps were snowy. The village really was no more than 40 properties and most of them were single skin corrugated iron huts that were knocked up for the tunnellers in the 1920’s when they built the train tunnel up there. Must have been harsh. Some time after, the small corrugated huts were clad and enlarged to make ski accommodation for those that come up to the ski field here. Hence...