A real southland trip

WOW. Time goes by fast. Here we are and it's Saturday already. And we're in Dunedin! What a trip. It turns out we stayed at Lake Wanaka for another day. It was sooo beautiful. Almost like a whistler-eque valley bottom amogst the hills of Kamloops. Rachael and I were told about the evening dry-fly fishing in the Clutha river. We've never experienced a full-on didymo infestation (aside from the Buller), and we sure were surprised. NZ's South Island is considered a “Controlled Area” by Biosecurity New Zealand, so they are closing any rivers infected, but are just trying to stop the spread itself by angler education. Now I'm an angler, and I like to consider myself educated in such matters, so whenever I leave ANY body of water in New Zealand, I rinse off my gear at the site, make sure there is no debris, and then immediately spray all items with a spray of detergent supplied by biosec-nz. When travelling I have the equipment soaking in a solution of either detergent, or bleach. When at home (or elsewhere) I dry. These steps are good enough for the government, and they would like all anglers, North or South (island), to exercise them. What I can't figure out, is why they do not post signs where there is a heavy didymo infestation, and recommend anglers not to use such waters! The local Wanaka fishing/fly shop recommended

that I DO go to certain sections of the river, knowing I was a travelling angler, and all I find is a creekbed full of rock snot. Are they stupid??

Anyways. That was just a little bit of bad stuff amongst all the goody stuff. Rachael said she wants to move to Wanaka. We stayed our second night in a little ... well actually a large campervan/holiday park on the west coast of the lake, called Glendhu Bay. Absolutely gorgeous. We arrived after dark, (due to some late-night adventure seeking on my behalf), and much to Rachael's despise, I awoke before light to cast a few flies at some river mouths. (Whatever people may tell you, even myself on some occasions, flycasting at night, I mean ABSOLUTE darkness is not fun, and even though it is dark, sunglasses are highly recommended for safety purposes) Anyways, beautiful fish. Even in the dark. For the brown trout, -especially- in the dark.

Note to self: Before moving the campervan between rivers, wake Rachael up and put the dishes away.

Although when Rachael did wake up, put away the dishes, and stop yelling, she LOVED the scenery. I'm so smooth sometimes.

We decided that we'd stop by Queenstown “just for a little visit”. Most people manage to spend their whole vacation there, (and sometimes their whole savings too), but we were getting short on time, so we decided just to drop by. Good thing we did. After being on “fleece-people” time, and smelling like “fleece-people”, we suddenly found ourselves in a hustling, bustling, non-fleece-people friendly mountain-city. The only thing I have to compare it to is spending two weeks wearing the same clothes in the now-defunct ski area Fortress Mountain, and then waking up to Whistler Village on New Years Eve! We were not ready for the high-class change, so we quickly stopped by the Wharehouse for some cheap camera batteries (bad mistake) before we took off like lightning towards Invercargill.

Invercargill was neat. It's a really laid-back prairie city that is spread out and absolutely no part of it is constrained. We took our time finding a campground and were not disappointed.

This morning we woke up with the sun, and made our way to the info centre/museum where I managed to catch a few photos of the rare Tuatara (a lizard) before he went to sleep for the day. The old guy was born in the 1880's. At this stage of our trip Rachael and I wanted to go on the ferry to Stewart Island, even if only for half a day, but at $51 a pop per person, it would be $204 for the morning “trip”, so we declined, but continued on South to Bluff instead. Turns out there weren't any oysters this week, so we had Bluff Fish 'n Chips instead.

Then we took off along the south coast heading east, drove to the southern-most point in the south island, viewed Nugget Point, a lot of hick-ass towns, and arrived here in Dunedin. If anyone is young and single, I highly recommend Dunedin. Crazy College town with crazy people.

Tommorrow it a trip to the Cadbury chocolate factory for her, the Speights brewery for him, and then north to Timaru.

Wish us luck!

--Josh