Holiday 2011: the final installment

OK, let's wrap this holiday up.

View Larger Map

Before we leave Invercargill though (the arsehole of the world, but with a nice farmer's market), we need to make a quick stop in Bluff. Bluff piqued our curiosity and captured our imaginations when we saw South, a documentary hosted by Marcus Lush and shown on TV1 here last winter. We loved South and by extension we loved Marcus Lush. And throughout the series, Marcus Lush had gone on and on about his "beloved Bluff", his adopted home town. So we wanted to see it. Also, Bluff is way at the bottom of New Zealand, at the end of Highway One. It's The End of the Road. Our tour of the bottom of the South Island would not be complete without a stop in Bluff.

The sign marking the End of the Road

There really wasn't much to Bluff. It was a pretty ordinary looking small town. Driving through, we can't exactly say we would describe the place as 'beloved'.

In fact a lot of it would be better described as 'neglected'.

We saw movement inside just after I snapped this photo and thought, "shit, someone lives there!!" We quickly drove off. I guess that makes me a drive-by photographer...

Still, I wished we had spent more time in Bluff. There was something about it that drew me in. Maybe it was the oysters.

But onwards and northwards...

We carried on along the bottom of the South Island until we reached a lovely little surfer's beach at Colac Bay. This was a nice rocky beach where we could watch surfers doing their thing.

Our next stop was Te Anau. We had stopped here during our 2006 visit to New Zealand. This small town is the pit stop for travellers who are visiting Milford Sound or doing the Routeburn track or one of several other tracks in Fiordland. It's a gorgeous area with a very nice lake.

From the town you can walk along the lake and right to the start of the Kepler Track, one of New Zealand's "great walks". Having our wee man in tow, we were not able to do the whole track, but we did manage to make two nice day walks out of it. Along the lakeside part of the track (which isn't really officially the Kepler track, but the track leading to it) there was a little wildlife centre. They had takahes there!

Not blue chickens

The first time I saw a toadstool was in the Abel Tasman park when we came to New Zealand in 2008. I was just as excited to see them this time. Gareth thinks this is just silly, but it's not. Red mushrooms are really neat.

toadstools!

Are we in Alice's Wonderland?!

The Kepler track was really lovely. Nice trees, nice views of the lake. It was all very pretty. What was NOT pretty were the sandflies. Oh My God, the sandflies. They were horrible. And us without our bug spray. Nightmare. I'll just leave it at that.

From Te Anau, we went on to Queenstown. The drive was beautiful, especially as we came to Lake Wakatipu. It was a clear sunny day with just a few wispy clouds lingering over the mountains. Breathtaking.

Queenstown is very touristy. It's packed with tourists and businesses catering to tourists. It's especially known for having every kind of adventure tourism on offer. Everywhere you turn there are opportunities to do dangerous things like jump off a bridge or careen down a gorge in a modified speed boat. It's a bit of a shame that the place is so commercialized because the setting really is absolutely stunning. The lake, the mountains, incredible. All of it.

Rather than stay in Queenstown, we decided to go a little further up the road to Arrowtown. This turned out to be a brilliant move. We loved Arrowtown.

We've always got time for a flat white

Quaint candy shoppe

Arrowtown was just dripping with charm and character. In fact, it was almost too charming. Part of us thought it lacked a certain New Zealand-ness. There were no rough edges whatsoever. It was just perfect and cute everywhere we looked. We're all for perfect and cute, but that's really not the New Zealand we have come to love. Still, Arrowtown is a beautiful place and I'd love to go back one day.

It's a place I'd take my mom to, because I know she would love it, if only she would get on a damn airplane ...

But now on to our final stop: Cromwell!

Cromwell made our list of places to stay because Gareth had signed up to participate in the Northburn Station 100 mile race. To be clear, that's not a 100 mile drive or a 100 mile bike ride. That's 100 miles on foot. Through mountains. In bad weather. If you're thinking, "Ooo Ooo, where can I sign up?!" then you can go here, you nutter. "Northburn Station 100 miler: You don't race it, you survive it."

Gareth has a history of doing this sort of thing - he completed 2 hundred mile events back in the States plus a bunch of other smaller ultra distances. This race is New Zealand's first hundred mile event on trails, so he was pretty stoked to take part in it.

Heading to the start line

doing great after 50k

Unfortunately, the mountains got the better of him during the night. Gareth finished his second 50K loop (110K total - 70 miles) and called it a day... He had a lovely souvenir to take home though!

Of course it was disappointing for him not to finish, but he has new found resolve for next year. Hear this mountains: Gareth will be back. And he will beat you.

Those mountains are big.

For further reading, there's a story and some great video of the race here (News 3 report).

So then we drove home, and not much to report there, except that we were caught in a sheep jam. Which of course was very cool.

So next year, we're thinking perhaps the top of the South....