Invercargill is one of the most southern cities in the world and one that we stayed in for a night on our travels along the south coast.

As we drove out of the Catlins we decided to make one more attempt to see sea lions in the wild and headed to Waipapa Point on our way to Invercargill. Although it wasn’t a gloriously sunny day, the rain held off and there were patches of blue sky. We hoped that the sea lions would brave the strong winds and be on the beach!

“There are around fifteen sheep per head of population in New Zealand.”

Success! There was one sea lion on the beach and he seemed happy enough for us to take a photo with him. He was big and not one that we wanted to get too close to, so we admired from a few metres away and then left him to his morning nap.

The drive down to Invercargill passed mostly through farm land. The road was lined with field after field of cows and sheep. In fact there are around fifteen sheep per head of population in New Zealand, that’s a lot of sheep!

The sea lion keeping a close on us

There are more sheep in New Zealand than people!

We’ve seen fields and fields of cows

Rich hanging out with a sea lion

There wasn’t a huge amount to do or see in Invercargill but we did love Queens Park in the centre of the city. My favourite part was the rose garden, filled with hundreds of rose bushes in bloom. The smell was out of this world and it looked spectacular too. After a short walk around it we found the roses we had at our wedding as well!

Queens Park is beautiful and when we walked around the lake we even saw some tiny ducklings waddling around, it was so cute!

The entrance to Queens Park

The beautiful rose garden in Queens Park

We found our wedding rose in the rose garden

Rich overlooking the lake

Rich taking a close look at the ducks

Flowers in bloom in Queens Park

We stocked up on food at the supermarket and filled up with petrol too, Rich even turned his hand to cleaning the windows of our car! We had a good drive around and were glad we only had one night in the city as there wasn’t much else to do. We were ready to see the Fiordland National Park and get started on the next part of our trip up the west coast of the south island.

The disused water tower

Rich cleaning the car windscreen!