Beautiful sunny morning. Started at 14 degrees and gradually made it to 18.
We drove to Bluff, the very tip of South Island. Stewart Island is beyond this and is a part of the South Island, but we decided not to go there. It would be another ferry trip and enough is enough. We did a 1 hour hike up the bluff to see the WWII battery. It seemed wonderful there . The mild ocean breeze and the exotic vegetation was so wonderful that I wished I could bottle it and take it home. There is nothing like it. Beautiful songs of birds I had never heard before. I was somewhat sobered when I read the plaque that said New Zealand used to be a very pristine and untouched land before we came along. There are now 35 percent of birds species extinct or close to it and 500 species of plant and animal gone from the South Island. It is now rampant with non-native opossums, rabbits and cats who eat the birds, etc. NZ will one day be like any other place.
The population of Invercargill is forty five thousand. It looks quite prosperous. Lots of agriculture.
If you love nature and all that encompasses visit this place now, because one day it will not be like it is now. Larry and I have found peace and serenity like no other. There are tourists here but we don't feel overrun with them. There is no hurry and no worries.
There was a multiple-cultured culinary festival here in town at lunchtime. Food was Maouri, Shri Lankan, Hawaiian, Chinese, etc. it was held in a sports centre. It was all delicious, specially because, I had started to make tuna sandwiches when Larry found out the festival was today not tomorrow, so the tuna's on hold for now. Larry went back to the hardware store and to a bunch of pictures the will follow this post. He is the famous tourist sign post at the south end of the South Island. And a view from top of the bluff.
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