We stopped off for the night in Invercargill on the way to Dunedin. We were now officially down under after crossing the 45th Parallel outside Wanaka a couple of days before. It turns out most of Australia is not “technically” down under – who knew?? We didn’t get up to much in Invercargill apart from playing pool (on a round table – check photos) and going to the bar next door to watch the All Blacks hammer Fiji in the rugby!

The next morning we were off to Dunedin stopping along the way at Curio Bay, the Catlins (a really rugged and sparsely populated wilderness area of the south east, it’s really beautiful though sadly we didn’t see any of the rare penguins that live in the area!) and the Petrified Forest which didn’t look anything like a forest! We were told that an ancient volcano wiped out all the tree’s here and fossilised them on the beach – they just looked like rocks to us!!

Dunedin is a student town based on Edinburgh. When the town was being designed a map of Edinburgh was placed over a map of the land where Dunedin now stands and the streets were drawn in the exact same layout….they are even named the same which was good as the Scots in our group could guide us around even though they had never set foot in the town before!!

Our first stop in the town was Baldwin Street – officially the steepest street in the world. Mambo our driver stopped and told us to jump out and stretch our legs with a short walk – turns out the steepest street in the world is a bit of a hike to get up – short walk my ass!! We jumped back on the bus and dumped our bags into the Leviathan Hotel, our digs for the night before heading off on our first tour of the afternoon. Laura was jumping with excitement – we were off to Cadbury World!! We were only able to get the short tour because of the time of day we arrived but it was interesting seeing how they make the chocolate and what goes into it. The chocolate waterfall was definitely the highlight – a few of the group wanted to jump in I think – they just about resisted!! It would have been good if we could have got down into the factory to see the different sweets being made……ah well next time. The free chocolate made up for it!!

We grabbed a quick bite to eat with Joe and Victoria before the second tour – the Speight’s Brewery – my turn to be jumping with excitement! The tour lasted around an hour and was really interesting mainly because our guide, Kevin, was so enthusiastic and passionate about his beer! Even Laura, a non beer drinker enjoyed it! Big Kevin saved the best bit of the tour till the last – he opened the taps in the bar and let us work away for the last 30 minutes….as much beer as you could drink…..brilliant!! We got a few snaps pulling our own beers and cider and even got our own beer labels printed for when we start our own beer company ha ha – tacky but a cool souvenir!! As if we hadn’t had enough beer and cider most of the bus headed off to the local pool hall for a final drink….or 2 before heading back for bed, a good day!

Unfortunately we had another pretty early start so it was up out of bed and onto the bus to head to Mt Cook. We needed to get on the road early because of weather warnings of severe snow – do they not know it’s July??!! We stopped the next morning at the Moeraki Boulders to get some breakfast and see this freak of nature first hand! They are a stunning collection of boulders that are formed from pieces of shell and rock that sand and other material builds up on top of! The result is perfectly spherical boulders that are hatched from the beach like eggs – very weird!! It was a beautiful morning when we were there so we had a laugh running around on the beach and getting our fair share of funny snaps! The last stop before Mt Cook Village was at Benmore Power Station and the series of 8 interconnected lakes that provide the electricity for most of NZ through Hydroelectric power – very impressive how they use these huge lakes to provide most of their power…no nuclear for NZ! The colour of the lakes themselves was just as impressive – they are full of water which had melted off the glaciers in the Southern Alps – they were a bright green/blue although the photos don’t really show how bright they really looked!

Mt Cook Village should be interesting – if we get the snow that is forecast we may well be staying there a few days…..I’d say there’ll be a few snowball battles anyway!!

Craig and Laura = )