Invercargill

Trip Start Jul 12, 2006
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Trip End Jun 18, 2007


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Where I stayed
(Te Anau hotels)

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Invercargill's a funny place, it's a big town but there's no one here. We had a look around last night and it was deserted. Even the pub, a big Irish place, had no one in it. It was like Buffalo all over again, except we never found the happening party street (I don't think there is one!). Lee had fish and chips last night, I had some horrid packet pasta thing and we just stayed in the hostel. Which says something because although YHAs have all the facilities, are clean and safe they aren't the most happening place to hang out. BUt as it happens we met some very interesting guys, an Irish guy travelling about and another guy who had been working in the Antartic for the last two years. Sometimes when you're travelling you meet some really interesting people, people that maybe in another life or your usual daily grind life you wouldn't even consider talking too or striking up a conversation with and I guess it's a shame in a way because we miss out on so much.

Today we had look around the town and stumbled upon an Air NZ office. Which we took our tickets into to see about planning our onwards journey from Australia. Currently we're meant to head to Hong Kong then make our own way overland to the rest of hte places we want to visit in SE Asia. Except it means going through China and we haven't got a visa.

We spent three hours trying to sort it all out and in the end found out that Virgin can do it all for us in their Auckland office, that really did set our minds at rest. So when we get to AUckland we're expecting to waste another 3 hours trying to sort our ticket out again. I don't know why they advertise it as an Alliance because no one knows what anyone else can do. It's meant to be a flexible ticket but it's been nothing but a bloody pain in the bum to be honest. We should have paid the extra and gone with BA.

After our ticket hassles we spoke to a very helpful man at the YHA about Milford and DOubtful sound trips, it's labour day weekend this weekend so we really need to get things booked outerhwise we may miss out. So he kindly booked us on the Overnight Doubtful Sound trip on Friday night and also into the YHA in Te Anau.

We paid the iNvercargill museam a quick visit to see the Tutara's (which are like lizard things), they have a display with live creatures in them, one is 100 years old! Then we took the scenic route to Te Anau and arrived in a lovely little lake town just before the sunset.

We're staying in the YHA which is the busiest hostel we've stayed in yet. We'd been to the supermarket before we got here so I made a lot of people in the hostel jealous by cooking us roast lamb for dinner. A few people commented on how nice the smell was as they took their beans on toast to the table.

Tomorrow we're doing the Milford Sound cruise and I can't wait. The scenery around us is beautiful so I can only imagine what Milford will be like.
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