Southern Scenic Route: Invercargill to Queenstown

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Invercargill

   Invercargill is the southernmost city of any size in New Zealand, a place of wide, flat streets laid out in a grid, low wooden houses, and a sky that is bigger and windier than you expect. Beyond it there is Bluff, the harbour town on the coast, and then a long stretch of sea before you reach Antarctica. About forty-seven thousand people live here, and the city likes to say it is the end of the line, which is a good reason to take a bike.

   Read the complete Invercargill write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Invercargill is where the day begins. Next is Te Anau.

2. 2. Te Anau

   Te Anau is the last proper town before Fiordland, and nearly everything about it is a preparation for the wild country beyond. It sits on the eastern shore of the lake of the same name, the biggest lake in the South Island, with the Kepler and Murchison mountains rising on the far side, and about two thousand people live here, serving the hikers, boaters and bus tours that pass through. Maori knew the area as a source of greenstone and a place to hunt weka and eel. In 1948 a doctor named Geoffrey Orbell found a small population of takahe, a large flightless bird thought extinct for fifty years, in a remote valley in the Murchison Mountains across the water, one of the great wildlife stories of New Zealand.

   Read the complete Te Anau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Te Anau comes up about 158 km into the recorded legs. Next is Queenstown.

3. 3. Queenstown

   The town sits on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, a long, dark, glacier-carved lake shaped like a lightning bolt, with the Remarkables mountain range rising straight from the far side in a wall of grey rock and snow. A Māori legend says the lake is the burnt outline of a giant, Matau, whose heart still beats under the water, and the lake level does rise and fall in a slow rhythm, a seiche caused by wind and pressure, which is the scientific explanation for the legend. The old coal-fired steamship TSS Earnslaw, launched in 1912, still crosses the lake to a high-country farm.

   Read the complete Queenstown write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 329 km.