Got up around 7:00 with full cooked breakfast at 8:00. We spent the next few hours here on the farm with the sheep. First there was bottle feeding some young lambs. One was a triplet birth, so had to be bottle-fed since birth since mom only has two teets. Then we watched Frank Forde (our host) herd the sheep into a pen so that a man who had come could sort out the lambs going to be sold for meat vs. ones that are not ready yet. So they ran them through a chute separating them with a gate. Then the man felt each one and marked the ones going to slaughter with blue chalk on the top of their heads.

After all that, and dodging sheep poop in the pasture, we headed through Invercargill and out to Bluff, the southernmost city on the South Island. We went to Stirling Point for pictures. There is an anchor chain sculpture there where the plaque says that it’s to link the peoples and that the other end comes up on Stewart Island. On the sign posts at the point, I could see that Cape Rienga, the northernmost tip of the North Island was 1,400 km away. Hobart, Australia was only 1,600 km. Interesting. So, I’ve been to both ends of the road in NZ.

We briefly went up to Bluff Hill Lookout, but is was very windy and cold and we only stayed a few moments.

We headed to Riverton, which we all thought was pretty close given Pat Forde’s directions. But it was at least 50 km away. We found a nice restaurant there and I had green lip mussels raised on Stewart Island! More to come, I guess.

We got back into Invercargill about 3:00 and shopped at a shearling factory outlet store before coming back to the B&B.  Tonight we were picked up by a van and taken into town to Buster Crabb restaurant for dinner. Lovely dinner. Nice sauv blanc followed by pinot noir. And lamb rump. Lots and lots of lamb rump on the menus around NZ. Also, lots of pork – bellies, ribs, bacon. Don’t remember hat from last trip here.

The big deal all afternoon was figuring out how much we could take on the Stewart Island flight. Limit is 33 lbs., but we found out today that’s for checked luggage and you can take a piece of carryon as well. So things keep getting shuffled around as we try to figure what to take and what to leave locked up at the Invercargill Airport until our return on Monday.

Some thoughts:

·      What we call French press, they call plunger coffee
·      There are pay toilets here where there is music, a recorded voice, buttons to push for toilet paper, and you have to wash your hands before the toilet flushes and the door unlocks. Uite entertaining.
·      Most of the land around the south end of the island is float as it can be. And there are a lot of cattle.
·      I have resisted and have not bought any cloth patches. How about that!