Road Trip Day 5- Bluff to Invercargill to Te Anau

After getting dropped off in Bluff by the ferry we had to figure out a way to get from Bluff to Invercargill because we didn't want to wait for two hours and make the guys in the van go half an hour out of their way to get us. 

So being in New Zealand, we did what people do and attempted to Hitchhike. Its not really too bad you just wait till a car is about to pass you, turn around, and smile and hold your thumb out, and I have an excellent hithchikers thumb- not as good as my brother's-his is a right angle, but pretty good. Some care waved at us as they drove by but nobody stopped. Untill one did. It was great- we just talked on the ride and he dropped us off in the middle of town- a really friendly guy. Hitchhiking is not too bad, then again, I was doing it with a friend, I would never do it in America, but here, its not too bad. We hung around town for a little bit and went to visit the Invercargill museum- which is shaped like a pyramid it is a wierd building, but it works. 

If you are ever in Invercargill, I don't know why you would be, but if you are, I would recommend visiting the museum, it has a couple cool exhibits, and some basically living fossils, and cool animals, it also has Tautara! Which are amazing because they are basically living fossils, and they are new Zealand's only real reptile, the rest are kind of non-existent, this country is/was bird dominated. The Tuatara are extremely rare and only a few remain. 

Eventually the gang got to us and somehow we shoved everything into the car- it was a tight squeeze and we his the road, and headed towards lake Manapouri. The thing I love about New Zealand is that it is so small, it it extremely fast to get from one place to another, we could have done this whole road trip in a day if we had wanted too. 

Lake Manapouri (center) Lake Te Anau to the upper right. 

Lake Manapouri

These signs are everywhere

We headed towards Manapouri for the night, when we got there we took a couple photos, it is a gorgeous lake but the holiday campsite wanted 16 dollars a head to camp. That is one difference that I definitrely don't like, camps in america are per site- not per person. 16 for camping was way too much so we headed out towards Te Anau and the government camp site- much better, $5 a night per person and less then 100 meters from the shore, what more could you want? The sunset that day was amazing.

That night a bunch of people went on a tour of the glow-worm caves, I skipped out an instead went on a walk around the lake with Sara, It was really nice. We saw a hedgehog- which are invasive here but oh-so cute! And Sara saw her first shooting star ever, I am still puzzling over how it took her that long to see one. After walking around the lake we went to a restaurant and had hot coco next the the fire, best way to warm up ever. Unfortunately we soon had to head back, that night was cool, but fortunately I have a very warm sleeping bag.