There is nothing to do in Invercargill.

It is simply the gateway to Stewart Island and that’s about it, other than perusing the streets looking at the shops in city centre. Originally we headed to Invercargill because we had decided to do the great walk on Stewart Island because that’s basically the only way to see the island.

That was the plan until we discovered that it was between $120 and $150 just to get there, not including the huts needed for the actual walk. Flights to the island were surprisingly on the cheaper side of that scale at around $120 while the Ferry was the more expensive option (much to our surprise). As backpackers there are a lot of things we obviously want to do while travelling the country but we also need to remember that we are travelling on a budget. Paying that much money just for a flight isn’t something we were looking to do. Sure we wanted to do the great walk on the island but we can hike freely in more than enough places across the country and weren’t looking on paying over $300 to hike.

Sometimes the small plans we make don’t get followed through with simply because it doesn’t fit in to the budget we have. Budget’s are super important when backpacking because money is your livelihood and if you blow it all on one activity early on you’ll be disappointed near the end when you can’t do something you had your heart set on. So our plans changed, which is exactly why we never have a 100% set schedule (luckily). Things are constantly changing while travelling and not having a set plan means not being disappointed if something doesn’t work the way it’s suppose to. Of course we would have loved the great walk but there is still a long road ahead of us.

So instead we tried to make the best of the southern city, and looked to food to soothe our souls.

Invercargill is the home of the most southern Starbucks in the world.

White Girl mode engage.

There’s honestly nothing special about it, it’s just a Starbucks and the mugs they sell there can actually be bought at any of the ten (yes TEN) Starbucks locations in the country. The only cool aspect of the store was it had a post with how far away certain cities were, a novelty that is in quite a few places (which we lost the photos of).

There’s also a Hell Pizza location which was located right beside our hostel. Where there is a Hell Pizza there is a meal waiting for us to eat. It’s impossible to not want to order a pizza from this place because it seems like literally everything they make here is straight from Heaven (Completely contradictory from their business name but who are we to judge).

Otherwise all we really did was spend our time checking out the locate shops in hopes of finding some new hiking gear.

There was nothing thrilling about Invercargill, it’s merely the gateway to Stewart Island.