Thursday, January 28th. We wake up with the rain. It is not cool that, we planned to make a cruise on the sea this morning. We hesitate one moment to know if that is worth going there, but finally we say ourselves that the weather changes often quickly here. Let us hope! We have to meet at 9 am in the port. When the cruise begins, it is not any more raining, it is a good thing. It still remains of big grey clouds, but good … This landscape is impressive, there are waterfalls which appear of nowhere and throw(cast) themselves into the sea. Mountains have surprising forms. We admire this incredible landscape during 1:30 am. On the way, the boat approaches the edge and shows us some small sea lions who bask on rocks. We also pass right by a magnificent waterfall, until be cast anchor a little! At the end, the weather gets free little, fortunately because it is not really warm on the boat!

On returning to the car, we start for the South of the island. The next big city is Dunedin. We can go by a road there rather direct, but there we prefer to take our time and to set off "Southern Scenic Road" who makes us pass by attractive places. We shall stop this evening along the way to sleep. Before taking back the road of the South, we go back necessarily by Te Anau and Manapouri, then we come down up to the coast of the South. On the road, we make a small bend by the lake Monowai, just to have a nice place where to picnic. Well finally, this lake has nothing exceptional and the place is filled of sandflies, what is not very pleasant … These tiny creatures are the worse than mosquitoes. As a result, we do not linger and we immediately after leave to eat. We drive to the bay Te Waewae where we stop one moment to contemplate the landscape, then we leave a little farther to the bay Colake. In this place, it has a big statue of a surfer on a wave. Nice! Otherwise, the view of these two bays is attractive, but the big grey clouds prevent the sun from illuminating these beaches and from making them magnificent.

We arrive then at Riverton, a small village of the coast. We go to Mores Reserve to have a point of view on the sea and Steward Island. Without the island, we have difficulty in seeing it because of the bad weather. We look for then the house of our host of this evening. On his address it is written Invercargill (the city which is in some kilometer from there), but it is in fact a house lost on the road. It is not evident to find it! He left us some indications in internet, which we try to follow … When we think of being in the given place, we call him, then he comes to look for us. His house is only a few meters away! In fact, it is not really its house but that of her sister that went on holiday. John returned not long ago of Japan where he lived during 11 years. We speak about a good moment together, then we leave him one moment to leave in search of internet and of gasoline to Riverton. Without this city is not really very big, and at the end of a good moment of search, we return empty-handed to John, without having the address of our host for tomorrow or gasoline to continue (the light is switched on). We spend the quiet evening, to eat a good ready-made meal by John (a very good beefsteak and vegetables, it’s so nice a good meal like that!) and to look at Open of Australia by making of the computer.