We woke up early to catch the 8:00 am ferry back to Bluff. It was a nice cool calm morning so it was a pretty gentle trip back across the straight. Andrea got to talk to a very nice native kiwi (man not bird) whose family has had a home on Stewart Island since the 1890's.
We meet our bus at the ferry terminal and headed back into Invercargill for a little breakfast stop. Had some nice greasy eggs and bacon (meaty shoulder bacon, not that crappy strip bacon).
Then we headed out to check out the most southern point on the south island. It is a very windy spot!
We got some nice pictures of the point and the lighthouse.
Very windy spot...the type of trees below are normally 20 to 30 meters tall, the ones below are only about 5 meters tall and grow almost completely horizontal to the land.
From the southern most point we headed over to the Caitlins . This a very scenic beach holiday area for people from Christchurch, Dunedin, etc. And has a very cool and very rare area of petrified forest. It is believed that a volcanoe erupted a few years ago (thousands or millions of years ago) and sent this huge ash mud slide down to the coast felling the trees and filling them with ash and instantly petrifying them.
From the petrified forest we headed over to Curio Bay. Curio Bay is one of the few spots that has resident Hectors dolphins that stay in the bay almost all the time...almost all the time! Wouldn't you know today was one day they decided to venture out of the bay in the pacific ocean. Definitley not sweet as!
From the Caitlins we headed up to Dunedin. Dunedin is known as the "Scottish city" of New Zealand (incidently Christchurch is known as the "English city"). Dunedin is also known for having New Zealand's largest university, The Universtiy of Otago, and is also the birthplace of Speight's beer (one of our favorites)! We got checked into our hostel called Hogwartz. It didn't really have much Harry Potter themed stuff, but was by far the best hostel we've stayed in and the best room we've had. Our room had a great view of the city and the hostel was just a half block up the street from the Speight's brewery! So, we got our stuff into our room, had quick dinner then headed down to the brewery for the evening tour.
It was a pretty interesting tour about the history of Speight's, beer making and the making of the variety of Speight's. Speight's is known as the beer of real tough southern men (and women)...a real man's man beer(and womens). After the tour we got the opportunity to sample their six different varities. That means they told us what the six types were called and tasted like then let us drink as much as we could in a half an hour. We're not quite in university drinking shape, so we couldn't pound them like some of our fellow tourists, but we were able to decide on which ones we liked best. The best was their Distinction Ale, then the orginal Speight's, then the Pilsner, then the others (do we care about them...not really). We love the Distinction Ale!!!
After the Speight's brewery tour (best tour so far) we headed back to our hostel and crashed after a long day of "experiencing" New Zealand.
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