{"id":350,"date":"2007-01-07T12:20:16","date_gmt":"2007-01-07T19:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/squids.ca\/Blog\/?p=350"},"modified":"2007-01-07T12:20:16","modified_gmt":"2007-01-07T19:20:16","slug":"the-great-southern-tour-the-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/?p=350","title":{"rendered":"The Great Southern Tour : The Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well we are back from the our tour of the south of the South Island and our first experience with a caravan (and the lifestyle that goes with it) .\u00c2\u00a0 Overall, Leigh and\u00c2\u00a0I agreed that we had a great time and really enjoyed our trip but before\u00c2\u00a0I get to a few of the stories, first some facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>4853 km travelled<\/li>\n<li>The farthest from home: 699 km (in a straight line)<\/li>\n<li>It was the coldest December in 60 years (yes very)<\/li>\n<li>Caravan year of manufacture: 1976<\/li>\n<li>Number of sunny days: 1 (one) \u00c2\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>First Purchase on the road: heater<\/li>\n<li>Numberof\u00c2\u00a0 sun screen applications: 1 (one)<\/li>\n<li>Number of flat tyres on the caravan:1<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So you can see that the WX dominated our holiday with very very cold and wet southerly winds.\u00c2\u00a0 Down in those parts, there is nothing between you and the wind coming off Antarctica.\u00c2\u00a0 You can feel it &#8230;.. However, this just made for a less beach oriented trip with more time tramping and touring.\u00c2\u00a0 Interestingly out of the 16 days (and all the wild wx) we only got rained on once or twice when we wanted to do something and we just wore lots of layers.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact we wore more clothes on the summer holiday than we generally wear in the winter here in Nelson.\u00c2\u00a0 Strange but true.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We agree that there was no single highlight, we saw and did some very interesting things.\u00c2\u00a0 The rainforests of the Catlins were very impressive as was the drive from Te Anau to Milford.\u00c2\u00a0 As you can see from the number of kms travelled we drove up a lot of back roads and had a good look around at a part of the country that not many get to see.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 On thing we really enjoyed was the towns south of CHCH that we stopped in.\u00c2\u00a0Invercargill is a lovely city, with huge wide streets, lots of art and a general feel of a community that is pulling together.\u00c2\u00a0There were lots of reserves and domains and native bush that we wandered through.\u00c2\u00a0 Very GREEN and lush.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pulling the caravan was really no hassel, as we seemed to be either going against the flow of trafffic or were on the road when traffic was light.\u00c2\u00a0 The old Nissan did a great job and never missed a beat.\u00c2\u00a0 Manouvering around some of the camp sites was a bit hairy but we got it done.\u00c2\u00a0 I was very aware of the potential to hold up traffic so we made sure that we pulled over or got out of the way regularly.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Would we do it again?\u00c2\u00a0 Yes but with a couple of changes.\u00c2\u00a0 First the low point was sharing toilet and showers with the unwashed masses.\u00c2\u00a0 We decided that we do not actually like people.\u00c2\u00a0 Any caravan or motor home would need to be self contained in that respect.\u00c2\u00a0 Second the need to &#8220;plug in&#8221; at a powered site limited our options and meant we were in the densest part of the campsite.\u00c2\u00a0 Not having to be attached would make a huge difference.\u00c2\u00a0 We noticed that there are people who just like to be part of a herd.\u00c2\u00a0 We are not that sort of people.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pictures&#8230;. well I took a bunch with the new camera (panasonic 12x optical zoom 6mp blab blah ) and now that I&#8217;ve figured out how to reduce the size to something managable for dail up, I&#8217;ll load a few up into the gallary.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Any questions?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well we are back from the our tour of the south of the South Island and our first experience with a caravan (and the lifestyle that goes with it) .\u00c2\u00a0 Overall, Leigh and\u00c2\u00a0I agreed that we had a great time and really enjoyed our trip but before\u00c2\u00a0I get to a few of the stories, first&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}