January 10

I was up at 0640 and had a cup of tea, sausage rolls for breakfast (which otherwise would have been last night’s tea), then drank some coke (to replace the fluid which I had lost).
Then I had a shower and dressed (Fran had her shower last night), packed, packed the car and we were ready to leave just before 0800 – Fran returned the key.
I filled up with fuel at Caltex (138.9 cf 142.9 at BP) – the same place I had filled the day before and then we left Te Anau on the Southern Scenic route.
Once we had set out, it started to rain and became misty and cloudy. We went through Tuattapere and on to Riverton. Here I stopped to go to the toilet. Like many small towns, it had its own lolly shop (New Zealanders must have a very sweet tooth). We headed on into Invercargill. Our first stop was the iSite Information centre and then we toured the attached museum. One of the displays in the museum was for “the fastest Indian”. Armed with maps and information, we did the heritage route through town, then called into our motel about 1300. We booked in, then had our lunch in the unit. The unit had an upstairs bedroom as well as the downstairs room including a bed. I found there was Internet access, so set up the laptop for it and started uploading previous photos. We headed out again and visited Bluff, then toured the main shopping areas of Invercargill on the way back. We called into St Mary’s Basilica, but found it locked. I knocked on the door of the presbytery to get a key, then ended up chatting to the priest who opened the church up for us. He said the design was based on St Sophia in Istanbul, as the first priest to arrange the church building had spent some time at the church in Istanbul (this was poignant for me as I had been in St Sophia not too long ago). When we left, we did some shopping on way back to the motel. After putting that shopping in, we went to do some more shopping (at a New World, just down the road) and then called into Burger King for tea.
After refreshing the inner man, we went back to the unit. Tragedy – I found that the signal had been too low in the room to keep the strength sufficient and so no photos had been uploaded. After a bit of experimentation, I ended up with the laptop on the lounge table to get sufficient signal. Then I downloaded today’s photos and uploaded all the others while Fran watched TV and read, all the while complaining of a cold.
Then I summarised today’s blog, saved it, charged all the other batteries, got ready for bed and was soon to sleep.