It's getting late in the evening here in Te Anau, where we are parked in our RV about a hundred yards from the shoreline of New Zealand's 2nd largest lake. The air outside is pretty cold with a light wind, but we are staying warm inside our RV.
We'll be posting pictures in a little bit, and I'm looking forward to showing off the campervan we've hired for our South Island travels. In honor of the upcoming Rugby World Cup, Britz rental agency commissioned some special edition campervans and christened each with the name of a famous All Blacks rugby player. We are in the "D. Howlett 2000-2007" edition.
The last week has been pretty full starting with the freak 50-year snowstorm that we flew into in Christchurch, and then the awesome country house we stayed at to weather the storm. After picking up Dougie the RV, we headed to Oamaru for our first night in the RV. It's a 6-speed turbo-diesel Audi RV that can hold up to 4, and sleeps 2 pretty comfortably.
Thursday we made our way to Dunedin where we spent 2 nights and biked to Larnach castle. Saturday we met up with our kiwi friends Jen and Saul at a beach house down the Catlin Coast in a tiny town called Pounawea. We had a great time hanging out with them and friends. We ran into some sea lions on a hike around the bend out on the beach, which was a great surprise.
Today we drove through Invercargill on our way to Te Anau. We stopped at the Southland museum, where we lucked upon a special musical presentation of the South River Band, a motley collection of about 16 septuagenarians playing mostly accordion, piano, violin, and a lone tap-shoe. The Tuatara were on exhibit as well, an endangered species of lizard, with one of the fellows, "Henry", being about 120 years old. To top that off, we did a glow worm cave tour when we came to Te Anau. Between the weird music, lizards, and interesting cave tour, we felt we were recreating the documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams". All we need now is Werner Herzog to narrate in his German accent some poetic testament to the beauty and strangeness of New Zealand.
Tomorrow we plan on sleeping in and enjoying a large breakfast before heading out on the road to Milford Sound. We've heard various reports on the condition of the road out there, ranging from icy treacherous one lane stretches nestled between walls of snow to mostly fine with some slick spots at the end. The report seems most extreme from the tour sales people pitching us bus rides, but in the end we'll play it by ear once we get on the road. Hopefully Tomorrow we'll be parked in New Zealand's only fjord accessible by road.
More pics coming soon after we get back from Milford Sound and make our way to Queenstown.
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