Day of Disappointment…Riverton to Invercargill

This morning was nice. We woke up to sunshine and had a good breakfast. The plan is to check out the Riverton Rocks, check out a Maori art gallery, continue on the Southern Scenic Route and see Invercargill are (including the Bluff). We wanted to make it to the beach out by Porpoise Bay to see penguins.

From the campsite it was a short drive to the Riverton Rocks…we think. The end of the road had 5 or 6 large boulders in the sea. Not much to speak of and we didn’t take any pictures. Unless they weren’t specifically mentioned on our guide map we wouldn’t have noticed they are a ‘tourist attraction’.

We got over it and moved on to the Maori Art Gallery…which was missing. We found the address from the ‘Lets Go’ book to find an empty shop. So we continued on with our plans.

We got to Invercargill and stopped by the library (most of which have free WiFi) to pay some bills back home to find the Invercargill Library has no WiFi. So we went to the Café next door and continued to the Bluff. The description from the ‘Southern Scenic Route’ map made it seem very interesting with “great views of Stewart Island.” We made it to the end of the road to find not much there. We thought if we hiked up the hill we might change our mind about the view so we tried that. It didn’t help much. Here’s the great view:



Well we had enough of that, so we left. On the way out we read the guide books information on the Bluff to find out both Lonely Planet and Let’s Go highly recommend not going there ☺

We were now on our way to bigger and better things. Marian was on the phone with her parents and John was driving. About 10 km outside of town, we came around the corner to an intersection to see something strange in the road. There was not enough time to stop and the oncoming traffic stopped us from swerving out of the way. A few loud thuds later we pulled over with another flat tire.



Here was the final damage:



Luckily the owner of the objects on the road was still around. Chris Kelly, owner of the objects, showed us the 3” tall grated metal objects we ran over (they looked like the metal steps on the side of a truck). Here they are strapped back on his truck.



Chris gave us his number and the name of a shop to take the car to get it fixed. We then headed back into town on our spare tire to stay an extra night in Invercargill.