Queenstown, New Zealand

In a rather disconcerting example of déja-vu, I'm sitting at the same terminal, in the same internet café in Queenstown as I was last time I wrote a diary entry! I've been doing a bit more "city-hopping" as well, but as the title suggests, it's nearly done...

Well, I did ship out early the next morning to the capital of Otago: Dunedin, which is the Gaelic name for Edinburgh. It's supposedly a city with lots of Gothic architecture, which I guess it is, if you've never been north of the Equator. As a life-long Brit, though, seeing 3 churches, a town hall and a railway station that could have been in Bradford wasn't especially life-enhancing...

But I jest - Dunedin is a large city of about 120,000 people plus 20,000 students (or "scarfies") who come to study at the Uni of Otago. Initially it seemed an odd place for all the young Kiwis to come, but then I learned of the Speights Brewery and the Cadbury factory, and it all clicked into place! My two nights there were more than enough to see the immediate city, but there are nice areas just outside it which I didn't make it to.

As promised, I made it to the Steepest Street In The World (usually they can only claim Hemispheric status for these things) which is incongruously located in a suburb of the city. Baldwin Street starts as what I'd consider a fairly steep hill. And then it gets steeper... and steeper... and steeper still. They can't even use tarmac for half of the street because tyres wouldn't grip. I was having enough difficulty walking! Thankfully the council helpfully provide stairs up one side, and a water fountain and self-congratulatory bench at the top. To live in one of the houses on the street would require you to be very immune to tourists walking past your house all the time, and taking photos of it in a conscious effort to make your house look strange - and I freely admit I did so too.

After I'd seen the sight, I went to the chocolate factory, where I was made to feel slightly foolish wearing a hair net, as well as being the only member of the tour group between the ages of 8 and 35. On the up-side, I got plenty of chocolate out of them; alas, I was not allowed to sit under the "Chocolate Fall" which serves no useful purpose except for aping Willy Wonka, but involves a tonne of liquid milk chocolate falling through a silo where they used to store one ingredient or other. Well, anyway it was an interesting diversion for an hour or so, and was considerably less steep than Baldwin Street.

Not being overly disappointed when the time came for me to leave, I hopped back on the bus and headed off down the coast to the city of Invercargill, passing via the towns of Clinton and Gore, now linked by the "Presidential Highway" (the location of the towns is entirely coincidental to the names of the last President and Vice-President of the USA). Invercargill is a city pretty much off the tourist trail: the only thing I thought it had going for it (being a long way south) is actually another 20km south in a little town called Bluff, which sports one of those horrible signposts pointing to everywhere under the sun, as well as a nice walk out to the very South of the South Island of New Zealand - and, rather incongruously, an aluminium smelter. When I discovered that the bottom of New Zealand is only 46º south, I must admit to a degree of underawedness - I live further north than that, and it doesn't appear remotely far-flung! Nevertheless, the sky in Invercargill has a strange quality to it which reminded me of pictures I'd seen of Alaska, although the architecture and layout of the place is somewhat similar too, being rather flat.

So, what other highlights of Invercargill did I discover? Well, the supermarket sells 3 packets of noodles for $1.30, and a banana cake for $2, both of which offers I took up and subsequently ate. There's also a museum of sorts, where one can see the famous Tuatara lizard. Personally, I'm not at all sure they were alive. I'm told they breathe approximately once an hour, so I wouldn't hold my breath to see them jump through hoops or anything. [Sorry - Ed.]

This afternoon I returned to Queenstown, where I'll be staying for another 2 nights. I have a slight feeling I will regret this decision, as it's not an enormous place and I looked around it all when I was here last week. Still - it's not the sort of place where you can be bored for long, provided you have deep enough pockets. Checking my insurance policy, it seems that were I to be bonked over the head with a nuclear warhead, drive myself insane and commit suicide (although one hopes not all at the same time) they wouldn't pay out one red cent; but tying a rope around my feet and jumping off a bridge is absolutlely fine. Go figure.