South as!

Tuesday we headed for the bottom of the south Island. We went through Invercargill, down to Bluff. Bluff is the southernmost town on the south Island. It is also where state Highway 1 begins in the south. State highway 1 goes north from Bluff to run the entire length of New Zealand (of course with a break in between).

From Bluff, about half of us took the hour long ferry ride over to Stewart Island, the southernmost of the main Island's of New Zealand. Stewart island is tiny in comparison to the two main islands, and 85% of its landmass is National park. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to enter the National park; so we spent our time in Oban, Stewart Island's only town. A few of us decided to go in together and rent a car so we could drive Stewart Island's whopping 29 kilometers of roads. The roads only provided access to Oban and the immediate harbors adjacent to it. They do not go into the interior of the island at all.

Our expedition of discovery of Oban and the surrounding bays yielded the following results; there is not much going on on Stewart Island. It also rained most of the time we were there. I must say though, it was pretty neat being on an island that is so far south; closer by far to Antarctica than to Texas, and realize that the vast majority of human civilization has never been as far south as I was at the moment. The weather was mild, I wore a hoodie to keep warm, but it was by no means frigid. It also stayed light outside tall nearly 10:00 PM. This is due to the Island being on the western end of the time zone, and being so far south (this end of the planet is tilted more toward the sun right now, hince it is summer time).

HUGH'S TRIVIA FACT OF THE DAY. Stewart Island lies in the midst of some of the most pristine open ocean in the world. Therefore the rain that they receive is incredibly clean. As a result all of the water used for drinking, washing, flushing toilets etc. on the island comes entirely from collected rainwater. From the time we boarded the ferry, we were asked to please conserve water during our stay. Pretty cool.

The next morning, we took the ferry back to Bluff, got on the buss and headed for Dunedin. We made a few stops along the way. We stopped at a beach that is actually the southernmost point of the south Island of New Zealand (I can now say that I have been to both ends of the main part of New Zealand). While there we were standing on the beach, and noticed a head popping up out of the water. The next thing we knew, a really big sea lion came out of the water and hobbled up the beach right in front of us and stopped, seemingly posing for photographs. It sat there for a while, chasing back the occasional person, seemingly simply for sport, and then rolled around in the sand. It was pretty cool. Just about 50 yards away laying in the dune grass, was a male. He was huge. We all took pictures and cautiously kept our distance.

We continued on, stopping at a penguin preserve, but saw no penguins. Finally we made it into Dunedin. The bus driver was kind enough to drop me at the airport, after a few hours I caught a flight back to Auckland. I have been here for the past few nights regaining my sanity, and enjoying sleeping in a room that I am not sharing with 5 or 6 other people.

Tomorrow morning I leave to go to Sydney! I am super excited about this. Don't get me wrong, New Zealand has been amazing, but I have wanted to go to Australia since I was a child. Aussie here I come.