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I left Dunedin on sunday morning and carried on driving to the south through the Catlins and towards Invercargill.
the drive is very scenic and a must see in the South Island - farm lands, forest, rugged coast line, its all there to take your breath away!�I drove on a coastal scenic road, which had more than 50km of gravel road - it was great fun to drive on it but�scared myself couple of time by driving and trying to break on the gravels....LOL
during that�day, i stopped at�Nugget point (main photo) which has a lighthouse and has a fantastic panoramic view! but better still, it had colonies of penguins and seals nearby! At last, i would be able to see some penguins! so i walked to an observatory overlooking a protected beach, and i saw few seals laying on the rocks.... but still no penguins! i had to wait another hour to finally see one! and guest what, it was well worth waiting, as the one that got out of the water, was a yellow eyed penguin - one of the rarest one in the world as it is believed there are only 3000 left! its classified as an endangered specie. I was so excited as seeing one and finally i could feel that my quest for penguins had been fullfilled!
i carried on driving further south to Slope Point (furthest south point of the South Island) where you have some great rugged coastline and decided to stop in Invercargill for the night - on the way there, i run over some kind of animal which initially i thought was a kitty but was more probably a possom as i found out later a high number of these creatures dead by the side of the road! When i finally told John about it two days later....LOL... he tried to make me feel bad about it by repeating in a very sad voice these few words " YOU KILLED A KITTY!" - LOL ... he was only joking! LOL Anyway, even if it was, its not my fault if the f***ing cat was feeling suicidal! :-)
After a night in a dormitory at the backpackers hostel in Invercargill (furthest south City of NZ), which luckily was empty, so i had the whole room to myself, i made my way up to Queenstown.
4 hours drive, i arrived to Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown. its a very vibrant place with its young population and all the outdoor activities it offers. But as i came here 5 years ago, i , this time decided to take it a lot easier and spend the afternoon reading my book at the observatory overlooking the town and the the evening at the Casino playing blackjack. Next morning i was on my way to the Arrowtown.
Its one of these place, i first visited 5 years ago, that always stayed in the back of my mind - for its old architecture of the first settlers in 1860 and for its landscape and colours at autumn. I do like this place.
The town was built on the back of the gold rush in the late 19th century and had some of the first chinese settlers there. it has now become a touristic place but still has seems to manage to keep its charm. I would spend few hours there reflecting on some personal stuff.
i then drove for few hours via lake Wanaka to Haast on the west Coast through the southern Alps where i was hoping to stop for the night - despite a waitress warning me earlier on that day that Haast was not has big as the size of its name on a map makes you believe! well, she was right - there is nothing at Haast apart from one cafe, one motel and a supermarket that had half of its shelves empty!
this really reinforced the strong sense of isolation and that you have entered a primeval land - for over 4 hours, there was no radio and neither mobile phone signal! i must have seen 10 cars during that time and with the landscape being a mixture of rain forest / wetland / huge sands dune / moutain and rough coast line, you really felt cut from the rest of the world. But it was a great unsettling feeling driving on this only road!
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