It's a long way to Invercargill......It's a long way to go

Now that I have you singing, I'll catch you up on our adventures in beautiful NZ. I think I last blogged you in Dunedin and we left there on the 23rd of January. We decided to take friend Dean's advice and traveled the more southern route through the Catlin's. Great advice as the scenery was spectacular. The hills were green and rolling and sheep (imagine that) everywhere. Jon tells me that he has counted 53,798,201 sheep so far! This was my driving day as the traffic was very light and the roads reasonable, so I decided to have a go at it. I enjoyed it and it didn't feel that strange to me, but I nearly gave Jon a heart attack when we went over the one-lane bridge! That ended my driving lesson for the day! We arrived in Invercargill about noon and decided to book an overnight boat cruise on Milford Sound so we took care of that and then looked for a motel. We ended up in a nice motel in town and the manager used to be a chef, so she gave us advice for dinner, but we were disappointed to learn that "oyster" season in Bluff was long gone and would not come around again until late April. That was really our only reason for visiting Invercargill, to sample the Bluff oysters. No worries, we traveled a half hour to Bluff. Stood at the end of the road on the South Island. Took pictures and enjoyed a beer in the local tavern! Back to Invercargill to enjoy one of the best meals we have had, and to view the "world's fastest Indian" motorcycle. As it hails from Invers it was a good time for us. We dashed to TeAnau for the beginning of our Milford Sound adventure on Thursday and Friday noon we hopped onto a bus and thoroughly enjoyed leaving the driving to someone else! Our driver's name was Skip, and he was also one of the boat crew. Oh, while on the bus, we met Sam. He is 6 and his dad is the nature guide on the Mariner ship. It was his "day" to visit dad all by himself, so he was traveling on the bus by himself. He kind of adopted us and I was so glad that I had put apples and chocolate bars in my pack, as he enjoyed both of them. We boarded the Wanderer at 4:30 and sailed up the fiord. They told us that in Milford Sound it rains 2 out of every 3 days, but we had 2 glorious days. We dropped anchor and Jon and I decided to kayak. The temp was 24/78 with the water in the sound at a balmy 17/64. We loved it, except the sand flies, but they were tolerable. We weighed anchor and sailed out to the mouth of the fiord and were greeted by about a dozen dolphins and a small blue seal for over an hour. They were so fun to watch, but the water was dark and I couldn't get a good picture. While waiting for our kayak's and sharing my mossie repellent, we met 3 MBA students from MIT-Sloan in Boston who were studying in Auckland for a month. As you can imagine, they weren't very bright, because they asked if they could have dinner with us! What fun! Tania from Pakistan (Google employee in Boston), Sharad from Indian and Kristen from Boston. We had such a good time getting to know them and learning about their studies, and we introduced them to Geocaching! Small world.

We are having a great time, with wonderful HOT 90+ weather, but I will save the rest of the story for another day. I'll try again to add some pics for you to enjoy. All are of Invers, and Milford.
Our love to all. Birthday wishes to Jeff, and Sarah, wherever you are, we are sorry we missed you! Brian John we hope you made it out of China before the snow storm hit and to the rest of you. Keep warm and remember we love you!
Blessings,
Joyce and Jon