We woke up this morning to a beautiful day- not a cloud in the sky. After breakfast, we took the city bus to,the Octagon, which is the main square in town. St Paul's cathedral which was consecrated in 1919 sits on the upper side of the Octagon.. Next to it was the Municipal Chambers constructed in 1880. Directly in front of these 2 buildings was a statue of Robbie Burns which had a very white head from the many seagulls which use his head as a perch. While we wer...

Brrrr! It was very cold overnight in Invercargill so we got up early, had hot showers to warm us up, ate breakfast, and headed out on the highway to Dunedin. Jean suggested we take Hwy 93 to bypass Gore. It turned out to be a great suggestion. The countryside was so pastoral, we kept stopping to marvel at the beautiful countryside. We eventually left the highway when we turned to go into Balclutha, a product of the gold rush and on the Clutha River, the largest r...

We left our campground at Queenstown a little before 9:30 and headed south along the west side of Lake Wakatipu to the small community of Glenorchy made famous in the Jane Campion tv series "Top of the Lake". I think most of the series took place further along the road at a place called Paradise but it was much further and on a gravel road. Glenorchy was a sleepy little town but in a beautiful location at the head of the lake. We returned to Queenstown, filled up...

Jean and I were up early catching the bus to Milford Sound at 7:00am. The trip took 4.5 hours each way along with a 2.25 hour boat trip on Milford Sound. The first 2 hours were interesting looking at the Southland landscape. The NZ government is promoting recovering the bush land to productive farmland for dairy farms. Right in the middle of it all is a reserve to protect that very bush land. The reason for the reserve was because they had discovered a bird (the ...