The Southern Scenic Route - Te Anau to Dunedin

We had a lovely couple of days of days of in Te Anau on xmas and boxing day with Nicks family. This meant eating vast amounts of junk food - but hey we will cycle it off in the next weekk - and checking out Milford Sound. Unfortunately the day we went to Milford was the only rainy day over the past week but I think the cloud added to the majesty of the sound, which is actually a fiord (valley carved by glacier).

After over indulging ourselves we set off towards Dunedin. We were following the southern scenic route a very quiet highway that took us past Lake Manapouri towards the south coast. The ride out of Te Anau was our first truly flat day (but it still had a steep 300m high hill) so far. But we also had a strong tail wind so we were flying along. We rode our longest day 110km into a town called Tuatapere which is the sausage capital of NZ, but alas being the 27th of december the factory was closed. So no sausages for dinner. But we did manage to have the best ice cream so far. We were sitting outside a takeaway shop and everyone kept on walking out with huge ice creams, so we decided to get one. We ordered a one scoop for a mere $1.50 and the lady stacked it so high with 3 large scoops that for the second cone we only ordered a kidy cone which was still huge!!

After Tuatapere we reached the southern coast and rode along the coast to Invercargill, unlucky for us the wind was blowing from the east so we had a slight head wind, but all the trees were nearly horizontal from westerly winds (which would have given us a tail wind....). We stopped off along the coast and collected some lovely smoothed gems from the beaches and had a delicious lunch of blue cod on the beach at Riverton (claimed to be NZ's oldest town??).

We had a nice ride into Invercargill and were taken back by the wide streets and cycle lanes on nearly every road! Fantastic! We stayed at Nicks friends Naomis house for 2 nights while we were in Invercargill. On our day off we went down to Bluff for the morning then went and saw the Tuataras at the museum which was very cool.

After invercargill we headed along the Catlin coast, in our opinion one of the best kept secrets in the south island. We took a very quiet road which was sometimes gravel along the coast for two days. In the mornings we hardly saw a car for the first couple of hours!! The road is quite hilly in places and there are plenty of little side trips off the main road to go to, such as remote lighthouses and plenty of waterfalls. We were sucked into riding 100m of the road to check out Niagra Falls which was no more than a rock with a bit of water rushing over it!! But there were plenty of other 'real' waterfalls which were cascading down the cliffs.

We overnighted at a amazing places called Curio Bay. We were given the best campsite (because we didnt have a car) that was on a cliff overlooking the beach. We even had our own picnic table and enjoyed a lovely dinner while watching Hectors Dolphins and seals swimming in the bay!! After dinner we wandered to the near by fossilised forest and sat on the rocks and watched some yellow eye penguins come out of the water to their nests in the bushes. There were also some huge sea lions sitting on the rocks waiting for the penguins to come in so they could eat them, but luckily that didnt happen.

We then rode onto Kaka Point our spot for new years, which was a nice little beach which had all of Balclutha (only 20km away) staying at it. There was a big fire on the beach for New Years eve but other that that we had a pretty quiet night.

The next day we had off and rode out to Nugget Point lighthouse where again there was plenty of wildlife to see, big sealions on the beach that you could walk very close to, and heaps swimming off the rocks.

The Catlins is an awesome place to get away from most of the usual tourist traffic and there is so much wildlife and lovely forests to explore.

On the 2nd of Jan we rode into Dunedin and for the first time this trip we had to ride on the number 1 highway which being the south Island was pretty quiet. After 40km on it we turned onto a quiet road and rode through Taieri mouth and brighton into Dunedin where we would have a couple of days off before heading to Queenstown for Naomis wedding via the Otago Rail trail.