Today was VERY rainy :( We woke up to the sound of the rain on our roof, managed to pack up and eat breakfast during a quick 'sunshine break' and hit the road! We decided not to hang around for my blood test results as we didn't think they'd show anything different, and we wanted to move on to Invercargill.

We drove all morning in the rain with a few stops - one to see 'Niagra Falls' at the side of the road, but in Dave's words it 'wasn't even worth a photo!' and once at the 'Petrified Forest' at Curio Bay on the very Southernmost coast of the South island. It is the remains of a forset from Jurassic times, which has been preserved by the sea, quite interesting to see but far to cold and windy to stay long - we didn't even get a photo!

At lunchtime we arrived in Invercargill and parked up at Queen's Park which also houses the I-site and the Southland museum. We used the internet in the I-Site then had a look around the museum. The highlight was the living exhibition Tuataras, which are the only remaining species from the dinosaur age, and can live to over 100 - Henry, their oldest on exhibition is 114 and had his first offspring at 111! One of the museum guides, originally from Manchester, told us all about the Tuataras, and then all about her life in NZ, and how when her and her husband emigrated, they did it for an adventure, but have never looked back and would never go back to England now. Food for thought...

After looking around the rest of the museum, we wandered through the massive Queen's Park. Dave had lots of fun feeding the ducks with some bread we found that had been abandoned. We also looked in the winter gardens and bird aviary, before walking back to the van. We drove to our campsite for a few nights, just outside of the city, where we spent the rest of the night watching TV - luxury after 2 nights on a DOC campsite!