20/11/06 - Got picked up at 8.20am for my day trip out to the Fiordlands and Milford Sound.  Yet another great group, including 4 Americans, Jack and Marie and Christine and Jack's brother (who's name I just didn't catch all day!).  Our driver/guide, Eric and then later on Alan were great.  It was quite a journey to get out there, around 4 hours in all, but we stopped a few times including a bird/wildlife park, where I saw my first bird called a Takahe, which is a flightless bird.  Took some photos, quite funny!  Got some lovely photos all day actually at the different locations we stopped at along the way, including 'Mirror Lakes'.  We had to go through a road tunnel through a mountain which was good, it was really dark!  We stopped for quite a while on the one side, waiting for the lights to go green and there were lots of birds called 'keas' around and they are cheeky devils!  They fly onto the cars and pick at all the rubber bits, like your windshield wipers and the seals around doors/windows, but they are quite funny, big birds too!  I learnt the difference between a 'fiord' and a 'sound'.  A 'fiord' is created by a glacier pushing through the landscape, whereas a 'sound' is created by a river.  Therefore, Milford Sound should actually be called Milford Fiord, hence it being in an area called the Fiordlands, but someone made a mistake and it has just stuck!  We eventually made it to our boat, Mitre Peak and we boarded and set off into Milford Sound (Maori = Pio Pio Tahi).  The scenery was breathtaking and the waterfalls beautiful, the skipper even managed to manoeuvre the boat right into one waterfall and then reversed back out, he did warn the people up the front first though!  and he gave the front windows a good clean!  We saw lots of wildlife along the way, including bottle nosed dolphins, a leopard seal and some Fiordland Crested penguins.  It was very windy on deck, so eventually i went inside for a cup of tea and some muffins, courtesy of our tour.  Christine played 'minder of the muffins', as other people on board were thinking they could help themselves, but they were only for our tour group, so that was quite funny!  We had dinner at a nice ranch house on the way back, I had some local salmon and it was just gorgeous!  For the rest of the journey back we watched a film called 'The Fastest Little Indian' starring Anthony Hopkins, who played Burt Munro.  I hadn't heard of Burt Munro before, the film is all about him getting his old motorbike, a 1920's Indian Scout, to the saltplains at Bonneville in the USA, where he then broke the landspeed record for that bike of over 200 mph.  I really enjoyed the film, even more so because it was a true story.  I then found out that the bike is on show in Invercargill at the Honda garage and I am going there tomorrow, so I will go and have a look.  Got back into Queenstown and drropped off back at the lodge at 10pm, very long, tiring day, but very enjoyable.

21/11/06 - Got up and had a nice breakfast again looking out of those big restaurant windows at Lake Wakapitu.  I then drove up to the Kiwi and Birdlife Park, as I was determined to see a Kiwi bird!  This park is very well done, I got to see the Kiwi's, they are well cared for, in complete darkness, you have to let your eyes adjust before you can see them and you are not allowed to take any photos.  It was great, they are funny creatures and very interesting. You make your own way around the park with an audio guide which is really good, so you can go at your own pace.  At 11am I sat down to watch the wildlife display, followed by a traditional Maori show.  They were really good.  I learnt about the Tuatara (like a lizard) which has a third eye!  When it's a baby you can still it, but as it grows up skin forms over it, so you can't see it in an adult, but skeletons show a third eye socket on top of their heads.  It must have been there in older times to help them see flying predators from above.  Also, Possums are a real problem to the NZ wildlife, as it is not native to NZ, they were introduced to NZ from Oz in order to establish a fur trade, but they have now got out of hand and because they aren't native, do not have any natural predators to kill them off, so they are running around the country happy as larry, but eating up all the foods that lots of other NZ wildlife need to survive.  Subsequently, lots of native birds are nearing extinction!  Therefore, we were told not to worry if we run any over and encouraged to buy NZ Possum products.  The Maori show was fab and they got us up and singing and dancing, it was good fun.  After that I went into the town and bought a new mobile phone, remember my other one got soaked up Franz Josef Glacier!  I had waited until now to see if it miraculously decided to work again, but it was well and truly dead and I was concerned that driving around on my own without one.  I bought one which was a limited edition 'pink' Nokia one, so some of the proceeds went to Breast Cancer.  Put my sim card in to check it worked and it did, hurrah!, but unfortunately it had not saved any of my phone numbers, DOH!  Will have to start entering them, when I have got them off everyone! Fortunately, Mum, Tracey and Auntie Irene had all texted me, so I just saved their numbers that way!   Got back to the lodge, did some laundry and had another lovely dinner in the restaurant, I just can't get enough of that view!

22/11/06 - Boo Hoo!  I had to check out today and leave my lovely room and that beautiful view!  I had chickened out well and truly of doing the bungy jump! It just didn't feel right, so I decided why put myself through it, who was I doing it for anyway? Not myself, probably only to be able to say to others that I had done it, not a good enough reason, so no thanks!  Headed out to Invercargill via 'The Remarkables' and 'Deer Park Heights' some more LOTR locations!

Got to Invercargill and checked into Tuatara Lodge.  I was feeling really tired, so decided to take it easy and not rush out to see everything.  I did however, end up walking up to Queens Park and strolling through the park and the adjoining museum.  When I got back, I noticed a cinema just across the street, so I wandered over and ended up watching the new Martin Scorcese film 'The Departed' with Leo di Caprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin,Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen.  It was a very good film, a bit gory and masculine in parts, but a very good story.

23/11/06 - Checked out and decided to go a bit further along the coast to see a village called 'Bluff', the oldest village in NZ.  It was a bit of a let down, it is showing it's age and it reminded me of a typical old seaside town in Wales with some boarded up and neglected old buildings.  I drove up to Bluff Lookout Point and could see over to Stewart Island (the little mentioned 3rd Island of NZ).  I had already decided not to take the ferry over there, as they were not regular enough and I wouldn't be able to get back until around 5pm.  I drove back into Invercargill to go and see 'The Fastest Little Indian' before heading onto Dunedin.  Well this turned out to be harder than I thought it would be.  I went to the Honda garage, as I had been told, only to discover that it wasn't there and the staff weren't sure where it was.  They suggested I try further down the road at the Honda bike garage (which made more sense!), but when I got there it wasn't there either!  One guy thought it was at a place called Hayes and Sons (next door to the first Honda Garage!) and another guy thought it was at the museum in Queens Park.  I had been in the museum yesterday and hadn't noticed it, so I didn't think it was there.  I thought this was highly hilarious, there are signs over the town about Burt Munro, but no-one knows where his famous bike is, soooo funny!!  I went to Hayes and Sons on Dee Street and low and behold it was there, hurrah!!  I got some photos and felt very pleased that I had got to see it with my own eyes.  Mission achieved, I could now move on!  Didn't take too long to get to Dunedin, checked into the Manor House, which was a bit run down, but clean at least and Lauren was very nice, it was only her third day, bless, I thought she was doing very well.  I walked into the town, which has a feint wiff of Scotland about it.  There is a statue of Robert Burns in the centre and a few 'Scottish' shops, but there wasn't much mention of why when I looked in the visitors centre, I can only presume the first settlers here were from Scotland.  I discovered there was a Cadbury's factory here, so I was going to go and see if I could buy some choccy from their shop, only to discover you can't if you haven't done one of their tours, how rude!  Managed to find a book exchange shop, so changed the two I had read for another two.  Great I now had something to read, especially as I was going to Lake Tekapo tomorrow for a few days, where I was planning on relaxing and reading by the lake.