NZ: Invercargill to Manipouri

December 30, 2011

Throughout the very early morning, both Ryan and I were awoken periodically by the sound of sheep and a very strange sounding bird.  We're not sure what it was, but we both had weird dreams about it.  Taking advantage of our gourmet kitchen (and the $38/night charge) we made grilled cheese and tea for breakfast, then used the internet.  This was where we first discovered that our money card actually couldn't be reloaded.

On our way to Manipouri in Fiordland we passed many New Zealand landmarks.  First was Riverton - a very pretty town, and also the oldest on the South Island.  If timing had worked out it would have been great to spend a morning there.  A bit later we saw a fat pig running around on the road.  This was weird in general, but even weirder because it was the only pig we saw all trip.  Next we made a brief stop at Orepuki beach. 

It is also known as gemstone beach, but we forgot to look for gems because Ryan was too busy telling me how a "giant tsunami" came thousands of years ago to bring this rotting wood ashore. 

I'm obviously oversimplifying his explanation, but I'm pretty sure it's a load of crap anyways.  Either way, first he got mad at me for not believing him, but then it became the running joke that everything we saw thereafter was formed by a giant tsunami (seriously, I'm laughing even as I'm writing this).  The other cool part about the beach was the little (dead) blue jellyfish that had washed ashore.  They made a funny popping noise when we stepped on them, tee hee!

Finally, we passed through Tutapere (the sausage capital of New Zealand) before arriving at our campsite on Lake Monowai (50 minutes outside of Manipouri).  The drive was down an 8km dirt road surrounded by streams, mountains, and sheep.  The site, although majorly bug infested, had our first picnic table.  After this a picnic table became a site requirement, since we were sick of eating on the ground. 

We were uncertain if we were supposed to drive to the site since there was a giant boulder in the way, but a bunch of camper vans had somehow managed so we gave it a go.  It's hard to see, but the side with the plants had an intimidating slope for our tiny car.

We quickly pitched our tent to claim our spot (there were only 5 total) and interestingly we saw a campervan from the previous night doing the same thing.  The next morning was our big kayak trip departing from Manipouri, so we wanted to do the drive and find the location ahead of time so nothing would go wrong.  Turns out we needed to factor "sheep crossing" into our travel time.

In Manipouri we got "lost" in the one road town while we were looking for the info centre, but it made us find a short trail we thought would lead to a lookout since it was on Lookout Road.  It didn't.  The trip was still worthwhile because we had an excellent lunch of fresh, local, pan fried blue cod and pizza with beautiful views of Lake Manipouri.  After a short walk on the stony beach we drove back to our campsite to prepare couscous, corn, and beef for dinner. (wine: Stoneleigh Reisling, Marlborough, 2008 - awesome!) 

After dinner we took a short walk down the trail by our campsite which was beautifully green and lush. 

We also saw this mossy thing that looked like a snail.

That night we slept terribly; I dreamt of giant snails and Ryan dreamt of vampires.  It didn't help that it was really cold and there was a gunshot at 3am.  None of this is good with a looming 5am wakeup call!