Southern Scenic Route Part 2

p.s. it's not me!

It was cloudy and rather bleak when we drove past the statue of a surfer on a wave at the entrance to Colac Bay which has a large sandy beach and is a very popular surfing spot so we didn't actually stop and instead have downloaded a picture from the internet of the statue which is cheating but it will help us remember the Bay!

Monkeying around at Monkey Island!

We stopped instead at Monkey Island, Orepuki, where there is a free overnight parking area for motorhomes right beside the beach, there being about 6 other campers already there. Monkey Island is tiny and is accessible at low tide. The sign explained that it was named because supplies for the local village which doesn't really exist anymore were brought in by boat to the Island at high tide and they used a monkey winch for doing this. Some clown had of course deleted the word 'winch' so it reads as though the monkey did all the work!

Wot - no ropes?!

It rained during the night but eased temporarily in the morning so we could have a good walk along the beach, a rockclimb on sandstone cliffs, and a fossick at Gemstone Bay for semi precious stones such as garnets, jasper, quartz and nephrite. Apparently there is a constant change on the beach from sand to stones dependent on how much water has been coming down the Waiau river and little stream. On the surface we didn't think there were that many stones visible but certainly you could find lots if you dug down - nothing so special that we wanted to weigh our bus down with though!

After the fossick we headed on to Tuatapere, another depressed town with a population of about 580 and lots of houses for sale. The rain was really coming down by this time and the temperature was freezing at only 8° - quite a difference from the 26° we just had at Invercargill. We stopped for the night in the local Holiday Park and were pleased to get some washing and drying done, get our communication systems charged up and put the heater on.
Tuatapere calls itself World Famous for its sausages so we did quite a walk down the road to the local "butchers" to help support the town by having sausages for dinner. The entire selection of sausages consisted of 3 packets of plain beef ones and 1 packet
of bacon & cheese and most of the articles on sale were grocery items or fruit and veges. There were more lettuces than sausages!! So we snapped up the packet of bacon and cheese ones and duly cooked them up for dinner. Following this exercise I would advise anyone who is thinking of buying World Famous Tuatapere sausages when they pass through to keep on driving!
This morning we left the 'town' for the Tuatapere golf course which is about 11 km out, on the road to Te Anau where we are gradually heading. We had a game on their quiet, flat valley course in a mixture of sunshine, cloud and increasing wind with some overnight snow visible on the mountaintops to the north. It was a nice course to play with its wide fairways, nice copses of trees and better greens than we have experienced for a while. With the tractor mowerman telling us that we should stay the night and join in on their Waitangi Day golf competition at midday tomorrow we have decided to follow his suggestion and do just that. We probably need to do some socialising with other people before we forget how!