NZ – Southern Scenic Route

The Southern Scenic Route (SSR) of New Zealand begins in Queenstown, runs southeast to Te Anau, then along the south coast to Invercargill, north through the Catlins on the east coast, and ends in Dunedin.  We’ve traveled the entire four hundred mile route over the past week!

For three nights, we used Te Anau, in the Fiordlands National Park, as a home base while we toured Milford Sound and went on a couple of great  hikes.  Pictures of Milford Sound are often found on the front of tourism brochures – that’s how gorgeous it is!!  Unfortunately, it was cloudy, drizzly and misty the day we went, so my photographs don’t do it justice.  Here is a photograph of what Milford Sound looks like on a sunny day:

And here is a photograph I took on the day we went:

Looks like a different place, but it was still very lovely in a misty sort of way!

When we left Te Anau, we traveled along the SSR to the south coast of New Zealand and stayed in Invercargill, which is not a very interesting place. But it’s near the town of Bluff, which is the southernmost point on the South Island:

Along the SSR we passed these scenes:

New Zealand has nine “Great Hikes”, which are multi-day backpacking trips.  I would have loved to do ALL of them when I was younger/in better shape!  But, we’ve done quite a few one-to-three hour hikes, which included portions of the Great Hikes, and these are some of the scenes we saw:

We’ve had a couple of days in Dunedin, which is a college town founded by Scottish immigrants in the mid-1800’s.  Yesterday, we drove out to the Otago Peninsula and visited an Albatross colony:

Today’s been rainy, so we went to a Farmer’s Market this morning, and an amazing local history museum this afternoon.  We only have four more full days to enjoy New Zealand, so I’m going to stop writing, and enjoy!