Invercargill, New Zealand

After Stewart Island, every town in NZ had a pretty hard act to follow, so I didn’t rate the chances of Invercargill featuring too highly on our favourite location list. However I was ever so slightly surprised. Thankfully with the power of wikicamps we found an amazing campsite just out of the city which also doubled as a petting zoo with sheep, goats, alpacas, ducks and chickens, all of which Tim spent a substantial amount of time trying to get a selfie with. I however think that I won the selfie of the year completion, by getting a selfie with a hedgehog, seriously when was the last time you even saw one let alone got a selfie with it!!

Invercargill was to be our base for the next few days to mainly have a photo shoot with Blondini to get her ready to sell on Trademe, we also needed to get her a new Warrant of Fitness (WOF)which is essentially an MOT which is needed every 6 months for vans Blondie’s age. We decided to do it properly and took her to the VTNZ which is pretty much the company which invented the WOF and therefore a pass from them is a good sign that the van is in good order. It all seemed to be going way too smoothly when we turned up to be told that it was a 5 minute wait and just $50. So we handed over our baby and sat in the waiting room. The news was not bad but it wasn’t good either. She needed a new seatbelt on the passengers side to pass the WOF and not really trusting our own skills we headed across the road to the garage recommended by the VTNZ. Thankfully they are all too used to backpackers passing through and were amazed that we only needed a seatbelt, backpacker cars usually need miracles or scrapping. The painful element of this encounter was the realisation that seatbelts are really expensive! $250 for one seatbelt to be bought and fitted ouch.

Like everything else in NZ dealing with the garage was an absolute pleasure, the lady on reception had the seatbelt ordered within minutes and sent us off with a map of the town for an afternoon of exploring whilst they sorted the seatbelt and even took our girl back to the VTNZ to get her pass sticker, wow, now that is a service.

As it happens we had a really enjoyable afternoon in Invercargill and would never have seen any of the things that the garage recommended had things not gone a bit wrong, so looks like fate played us a good hand. Our first stop was E Hayes & Son hardware store, which just happens to contain a rather cool selection of vintage cars and bikes and most importantly is the home to “The Worlds Fastest Indian”. The Worlds Fastest Indian was a bike owned by Invercargill speed racer Burt Munro. Working from his home in Invercargill, he worked for 20 years to highly modify the 1920 Indian motorcycle. Munro set his first New Zealand speed record in 1938 and later set seven more. He travelled to compete at the Bonneville Salt Flats, attempting to set world speed records. During his ten visits to the salt flats, he set three speed records, one of which still stands today. Who ever though that a trip to a hardward store could be so cool.

Next we headed to the isite tourist information centre, also the home to a real life dinosaur. No seriously, it is! The Tuatara may be small but it is one of the only remaining real dinosaurs on the planet which was walking the earth 200 million years ago. One cool fact for you about Tuataras, they actually have 3 eyes. It can only be seen through the skin of newly hatched babies for around 6 months but this eye has a lens and a retina and is said to be used to detect seasonal changes by monitoring the light and dark, weird!

Our last stop on our garage advised itinerary was a hot chocolate in a chocolate shop. We walked up and it looked pretty closed but in true Kiwi fashion the woman was pretty much shut but planned to be around for an hour or so and so was more than happy for us to have a drink so long as we didn’t mind sitting with the outside chairs around us. Boy was this good hot chocolate, made with liquid chocolate and hot milk and topped off with a chocolate spoon. I was pretty much in chocolate heaven.

Just as we were finished on our tour map we got a call to say that Blondini was ready to collect and all fixed and WOFed. It may have been an expensive fix but it could have been a whole lot worse and we had a brilliant day that we would have totally missed otherwise.

We still had a free day in Invercargill and had a lot to fit into it, we had 2 big things to get photos with and I had found a tourist leaflet which told me about a little Southland Secret, Gemstone Beach. As a kid I was a super geek and spent all my pocket money on rocks and gemstones. A trip to Gemstone beach was totally un-miss able for me and Tim agreed to take me as it was pretty much where we were headed anyway.

So gemstone beach was AMAZING! It is as with so many beaches in NZ just a huge expanse of open sand with a distinct lack of people. As we walked onto the beach there was one man with a gold sluce box set up and another older man scouring the beach. They both seemed pretty surprised that there were tourists here but this is not really on any of the major tourist trails. We started to walk the beach with the older man who told us that we were to look for opaque white/yellow rocks which were hydroglobulous or lilac rocks which were sapphires, he also told us that his daughter once found a whales tooth which looks like a horn so Tim was off like a shot in search of a whales tooth. Sadly we were not successful in finding our fortune on the beach and within an hour or so the tide was coming up and walking near the collapsing cliffs was not a good idea so reluctantly we had to call it quits. Sadly we were having so much fun we totally forgot to take any photos of the beach, but this is totally on my return list if we ever go back to NZ. I love gemstone beach!!

With the Big Surfer and the Big Paua shell ticked off our list it was onwards to Ta Anau and the much anticipated Milford Sound.

Thanks Invercargill it has been a whole lot more fun than we ever anticipated!

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