Probably the dullest city on the trip - Invercargill

After a much-needed rest night in Te Anua, we headed out on the road to Invercargill, pretty much the most southern city in NZ (only Stewart Island is more southern, but there are only little towns there).  Invercargill is probably the most non-descript place I have been to.  The weather wasn't nice, and the drive was nto spectacular.  I had planned on going over to Stewart Island for the night, since it is supposed to be a lovely little area, but most activities were outdoors, so the rain changed my thoughts.

We spent the afternoon wandering the city, but never really found anything exciting to see or do.  The highlight was seeing a small monument that listed all family names in the city (Affleck was there - it has some strong Scottish heritage...)

We dropped off the brave few who were going to Stewart Island, and tried to see some of the views from Bluff where the ferry departed.  The weather got even worse, and it was extremely windy and pouring rain on us, so the views were less than perfect.  Oh well, at least it killed some time in Invercargill...

Given that it was 6/6/06, there was some speculation that some sort of terrorist attack may happen in the world.  Locally, it turned into a chance for the goth population to come out full force.  Invercargill has a weird vibe to it, with a lot of people just hanging out in the streets doing nothing (unlike anywhere else in NZ), and many are dressed in black, with piercings, tattoos, etc.  It really doesn't feel like the same place...  We thought about going to the "goth ball" that was going on that night, but then chose to go bowling instead.

Bowling turned out to be the best part of the day!  I had seen in a local flyer that there was an alley, so got the hype going to play some games that night.  It was well-received, so most of us headed over there for some good clean fun that night.

Despite planning on another early night, I ended up staying up pretty late with some of the gang and chatting about a bunch of things.  Learned a little from Dolly about India and the culture, which was great given that I was about to head there shortly.   On the other hand, I also received a ton of abuse from Dolly (jokingly of course), since I think she had had a bottle of wine to herself and many beers, and decided to take the piss out of us all...  Quite good fun though.  Probably the funniest part was when she told Maija to come stand in front of me.  When we asked why, she said it was because she wanted to see the height difference, since she wanted to see how I was able to kiss shorter girls!  Totally random request, but made us laugh...