Gah! Everything is moving so fast and I have heaps to write and never seem to get in front of a computer to write things down how I want them! For instance, I drove to Bluff the over day, I looked around the town. I saw 3 fish n chip shops that were advertising Bluff oysters... and each one of them were sold out or didn't have any. What rubbish. The most famous thing the town had to offer and nobody had any... probably getting ready to hock them all off at the upcoming festival in a few weeks for triple to cost - probably. Anyhow, my trip that day started off with a drive to Bluff as I mentioned just before. I went down to the signpost that showed I was at bluff and took a photo of myself underneath it - for proof hehe. It was a bit of a miserable day and it was raining on and off a bit. But I went to the Bluff Museum which was mainly naval based but showed some intereting things, like Bluff being the oldest European settlement in NZ to date. 1824 it was settled... only a few more years and it can celebrate it's big 2-0-0. Also went for a little walk around the township, which is a lot like Eltham - the town were I was bought up, and like Eltham, about 4/5 of the shops now are all closed up and there are mainly just pubs and dairy's still going.
After Bluff, I drove back into Invercargill for some lunch and then followed to coastline along to Te Anau. Te Anau is the last town before the Milford Sounds area. This town is a lot like Banff and Jasper in Canada. Tourist-ville. I don't think I have ever seen so many tourists. I was the odd one out because I didn't have any discernable accent. In Te Anau I went to the Glowworm Caves (the must-do thing for all tourists hehe) and drove aorund a bit. Small town but most of the shops are aimed at tourists. Even speaking to the locals (old people who ran the petrol station) they reckon it picked up and went crazy about 10-15 years ago. Sounds about right. So after the glowworms (I got back from that after 10pm) went bed, but not before booking a trip on one of the Milford Sound boat trips. Another must-do thing when in the South Island. The boat trip was at 9am. I had to check in about 15 mins before it departed and it takes about just over 2 hours to drive there from Te Anau... Get the picture? I had to awaken around just before 6am and drive there. Was pretty good though, I had some good music on in the car and rocked out most of the way :-) I stopped off at a rest stop for some awesome slightly-post dawn pics and also again and the amazing Homer tunnel. 1.5 kilometres long and takes about 2 minutes to drive through... I went through when the traffic lights weren't on... had to pray like mad I didn't met a tour bus coming the other way haha luckily I got through unscathed. Anyhow, Milford Sound... the place is packed to the eyeballs with tourists. It probably wouldn't be so bad if you had to work there, or were a tourist (of sorts) yourself, but I just felt a bit like I was invading a strange place and that I shouldn't have been there. Strange. Anyhow, the boat trip was pretty unreal. It was run by foreigners. Scottish guy driving the boat. Irish girls serving (and taking turns driving) - German people running the expo centre... bah. I found one guy who was a kiwi and we talked about him doing repairs on his Holden car -- typical haha. So the boat cruise was stunning. I paid a few extra dollars and went and visited the underwater place, 1 of 5 people out of about 80 who paid an extra $20 to go see it. Basically you couldn't go see it if you were on a tour bus because they don't wait. Luckily for me and my rental car that wasn't a problem.
I got back to Te Anau at about 12pm and then drove over to Queenstown.
Queenstown, the mother of all NZ tourist destinations. My god, help me. I really do not like this place. It' amazingly beautiful, but there something about it that just isn't right. It smells of money. Flash shops, SUV's, old people, young people... but it seems to be a playground. What seems to be missing are the middle class people, the young families, my age kind of people. It's weird. It's like a generation or two was denied access to the town. Don't get me wrong. If you are from another country and want to do all the stuff that this place has on offer, come over and enjoy yourself. If you are a kiwi person, on his own and looking to see some nice things and look around real New Zealand, go elsewhere. Anyhow, that only my initial impression, I'm trying to give this place a fair chance, and to prove it I'll be staying here for 3 days. I went on the Shotover jet this afternoon. I just went for a drive and found it by accident. I like it when that sort of thing happens, sort of like fate. That slice of fate cost me $109 for a pretty cool jet boat ride. Up, down, up again and down again the Shotover river we went... they take photos and movies of you in the boat and then try to sell them to you later. I didn't like my pics, I looked retarted - both pics where with me having my eyes closed and some sort of looney arm angle - pftt. The ride was pretty cool, but I wont be surprised whe I hear the day when they hit a wall and someone is killed. It's pretty split second stuff... :-) So anyhow, I might go on the gondola tomorrow for a bit of a look around, and perhaps a trip up north a little ways to see the Lord of the Rings main locations. I'm thinking of doing a bungy but we will see - probably do that another time when I'm with a group - kinda dull doing it by myself probably... scary as hell - but still not really that great.
As you can tell I'm a bit unimpressed with this area of the South Island. I wanted to get away from it all, and all this area is, is sinking me deeper into some fantasyland escape place. I'll go for a look around over a few days and see what I can find to change my mind.
In the meantime, I might edit this post a little because I really have done quite a lot over the last few days and I'm sure that I don't have it all down here yet.
Cheers
Matt
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