Who wants to see a movie in Invercargill? Come on... Anyone?

After Te Anau, Mel and I left Aaron on that Sunday and decided to try the Southern Scenic Route back home to Dunedin. There are a ton of stops along the way so we figured this would take us a good two days, stopping after the first day in the unbelievable southern town of Invercargill (hint of sarcasm). Aaron and I explored the Southern Scenic Route last January when I arrived and we loved it. The sky was blue, the weather was mild and we could have spent so much more time at the different stops along the way. When I was thinking of things for Mel and I to do, this was one that I thought she would love. UNFORTUNATELY, the weather was shit when we left Te Anau and it never got any better of the next two days. Since we had already booked the hotel in Invercargill, we trucked along anyway.

One of the first stops of ours was to see a 1000+ year old tree. We turned off the main road about 12:15 and with Mel's impeccable navigational skills and 25 million miles on horrible gravel roads in my top of the line 1991 car, we finally found the damn tree around 2 p.m. As we were driving down the gravel road, Mel said, I feel like we are in one of those horror movies where it starts out with two stupid american tourists who then get killed somewhere down the line... that was soo us. There was no one around... just old farms, sheep, then forest. Deliverance, anyone? Once we parked, we found ourselves on a 15 minute swampy forest track to this unbelievable tree that was around before 1910. Amazing (no sarcasm this time).



We pulled into the ghost town of Invercargill around 4 p.m. that night. If you don't know about Invercargill, you aren't missing much... maybe just some people without teeth. Mel and I went out to dinner at Lone Star and in New Zealand fashion, we ran into people we knew there and ate with them (aaron's little sister and 3 of her friends happened to be there that night for work). After dinner, we decided to go to see Avatar. I kid you not, we watched the most magnificent movie of 2010 in a small theater with NO SURROUND SOUND. I didn't even know that could still possibly exist. Avatar was played with one speaker in the front. Tourism New Zealand needs my phone number. This should be a highlight of any NZ visitor.

The next day, Mel and I finished the Southern Scenic Route. We couldn't do any of the beautiful beach stuff since the wind and the rain were impossible to see thru, but we had some great hikes thru beautiful tracks to powerful waterfalls. That night we were back in Dunedin and finished with our 2010 NZ road trip.