I took Nakedbus from Queenstown to Te Anau (pronounced "tee-ANN-ow," no hesitation between the syllables). Nakedbus is less of a bus company and more of a network of independent contractors all sold through one central website. Especially in the South Island, most of these companies operate using small 12-15 person passenger vans instead of coach buses, the kind of vans that Mr. McGowan would drive to take the chess team to different high schools for our weekly matches (yep, I was on the chess team in high school...we were actually pretty cool...) In this way, riding Nakedbus feels less like riding a professional bus service and more like your friend's dad giving you a ride to soccer practice.
Te Anau is a small town in Fiordland--population around 2,000. The town is on the shores of a nice lake, but Te Anau is best known as the gateway town to Milford Sound, which is a multi-hour drive into Fiordland and is supposed to be one of the environmental Wonders of the World. I wasn't planning to go to Milford due to time and cost, and the road there was closed due to heavy rain anyway, so it was a moot point.
The hopping main street of Te Anau...
Te Anau was the first place I've been that felt like an actual community where people live, grow up, go to school, and say hi to each other in the grocery store. In the summer, it's apparantly a top tourist spot, but in the middle of winter, it was cold, wet, and dreary. Some of the restaurants were closed for the season, and the town's lake was cloaked by rain. I walked around in the cold drizzle for a while, got 15 minutes of free internet from the small town library, had an uninspiring pizza from a little Italian restaurant, and returned to the YHA where I was treated to the welcome surprise of not having any roommates for the night. Having the room to myself was a welcome change after a week of constantly changing roommates, and I was able to finish my third readthrough of "The Wild Sheep Chase," listen to some music, and recharge my batteries before having to get up early for my bus to Invercargill.
When I had first started planning this bus trip while I was home in Bedford, Invercargill was always my final destination. It's the most southerly city in New Zealand (only the settlement of Bluff is further south), and according to Wikipedia, it's the sixth most southerly city in the world. Barring the unlikely event that I make it to Punta Arenas, Chile or Ushuaia, Argentina, Invercargill was the furthest south I'll ever be in my life.
Having held Invercargill as my destination for so long, it was perhaps inevitable that I built up the city in my mind to be more than it actually was. I hadn't heard great things about the city before (people would ask me "why are you going there?"), but no matter--this was where I was heading.
"Shearing South" was across from my hostel. I have no idea what it is.
Of course, there was no signs proclaiming "Welcome to Invercargill--the most southerly town you'll visit in your life" or "Greetings Mike Wittman: This is as close as you'll get to Antarctica." Nor should I have expected such. Yet Invercargill was such a disappointment--the most soulless city I've ever seen. The city has none of the beautiful mountains or lakes that the previous towns I visited had--it's just flat, open land. On the outskirts of town were a collection of supersized versions of every New Zealand big box retailer. The Warehouse Extra. Mitre 10 Mega. The inevitable McDonald's McCafe. And all the old favo(u)rites: The Baby Factory, Bond + Bond, Dick Smith's, Caltex, Hell Pizza, No. 1 Shoe Warehouse. The CBD, if you can call it that, was composed of a flat grid of medium-wide streets named after Scottish rivers (Esk, Don, Tay, Dee, Jed, and Leet Streets, to name a few) filled with an assortment of tired one-story buildings housing mediocre cafes and shops. It was a gray, overcast day, which seemed to be the natural and permanent state of affairs for Invercargill. It's difficult to express the lack of energy the city eminated. The only bright spot was a large city park, complete with a duck pond and an unattended bird aviary, but it seemed out of place, like serving caviar on a paper plate.
So how does one spend their day in such a city? Well, slowly. I ate a so-so bento box as my first meal of the day, and wandered the streets for a while. I had a muffin in the south-most Starbucks in the world (an actual fact), and poked around the town library. Movie tickets were discounted on Tuesday, so I saw a movie I had already seen (Inception, which was equally enjoyable a second time) and finished off with an average falafel kebab. Then back to the Tuatara Lodge, with its walls the colo(u)r of lemon custard.
$500 fine if you get trapped in their old elevator because you moved around
That said, my roommate that night was from Wellington, but wants to move to this area instead. To each his own, I guess.
Next time: The South Island trip conclusion (finally)
First of all, these posts are not tedious to read at all! I think I speak for everyone when I say, I love reading these posts! It's a special occasion every time I find a new post has been updated! They're exciting to read, and well-composed, so keep posting! Your audience loves it!
ReplyDeleteToo bad that last town was so dreary. It's the kind of place where something random might have just made it worthwhile in the end...like discovering some beautiful refuge somewhere unexpected in town...but perhaps, this time, it was not to be. Still, an interesting contrast to your other destinations so far.