On leaving Albatross Point we headed back inland in preparation for our drive to the southernmost city in New Zealand - Invercargill.

We headed south with plans to stop at Nugget Point for lunch where elephant seals apparently breed. We negotiated Dunedin again and hit the open road.

A couple of hours went by and we started to get hungry... Where was Nugget Point?

After consulting the map, it turns out that we had taken a wrong turn at the last town we went through... 30km back! We had found a short cut to Invercargill, but missed our lunch stop. We made the decision to have lunch there and then in the small town of Clinton (near Gore which Tom found very amusing for no real reason) and then headed back the way we came to continue on intended route.

With lunch hastily eaten, we headed back and arrived at Nugget Point a little later than planned. Unfortunately, at this point it also decided to start hammering it down so we had to run from the van in our waterproofs to catch a glimpse of the seals.

They weren't there.

Our extended detour had all been for nothing! We were now soaking wet with no photos of seals to show off. Still, at least the scenery was nice.

From there, the weather continued getting worse for the remainder of the journey south. We aquaplaned into Invercargill slightly later than planned, but the camp site lady was particularly friendly and didn't mind our late arrival.

We awoke to glorious sunshine and began to head even further south to take a look at Bluff. This is New Zealand's Lands End. We got there and we saw the iconic sign with the distances to major cities in the world on. After being amazed at how far we were from England (apparently its just under 19000km) we took a walk around the headland to get some views of Stuart Island to the south.

This was a great little stop on the trip and with the sun shining, we were in high spirits to take on the drive north towards Milford Sound.