From Te Anau where we stayed one night and where we didn't sleep a lot (a herd of German students had a party the whole night long) we drove along the Southern Scenic Route to Invercargill and Bluff. We still don't understand that name: scenic... We found it one of the least attractive drives we did so far in NZ.

We drove to Bluff for only one reason: to catch the ferry to cross to Stwart Island the next morning. Nevertheless Bluff was worth a visit! Besides that Bluff is very nice we found a lot of Paua shells. To find those shells was quite dangerous - for Pia. Even though I told her that the stones were extremely slippery, she wanted to test that for herself. She landed hard on one of the many rocks only wanting to slow her fall with one finger. As everyone can imagine: one finger isn't enough to slow down a body in full motion. The finger is still where it should be - just a bit thicker than usual.

The next morning we were woken up by the stormwinds and the heavy rain on our car roof. Pia became seasick only by thinking about the ferry crossing. We decided (after consulting the forecast) to cancel our trip. 2h later, the sun was shining...

As we didn't want to go on a later ferry we drove back on the so called "scenic route" to a place, where we could see sheep shearing. We even tried sheep shearing by ourselves. It wasn't as good a product as it would be from the professional shearers but acceptable.