As Tina and I were both quite tired because of the lost sleep the two nights before, we just got into our beds and spent some lovely hours just dozing off and listening to audio books, the first one being Ronja Räubertochter (eng.: Ronia, the robber’s daughter by Astrid Lindgren), which made people entering our 4-bed-room looking strangely at us, but I didn’t care. It was just lovely and relaxing. In the evening we were just getting up to have some dinner and had a talk to some very nice people in the living room, Liz from Montreal and Simon from Arles. After dinner I stayed a little to do some work when Tina already went to bed but it did not take long for me to follow. The next morning we enjoyed breakfast with Liz and Simon and another German guy who looked quite young. We told him to cook his eggs (which he did not know what to do with) for eating on his journey that day, but he obviously had never cooked any eggs… He just got a cup full of hot water and put the raw egg into it. We just looked at him laughing and told him that it was not a teabag. He looked very puzzled and did not know what to do. In the end he just left the hostel and left the half-raw eggs for anybody to scoop away. Thanks a lot, dumbo.
We took a little ride through town (not very pretty as most NZ-towns, but with a few old buildings scattered hither and thither) to find our beloved Pack’n’Save-Supermarket. After putting half the supermarket’s products into our cart we looked for some fresh ginger beer…and were told that in Invercargill you could buy alcohol at special stores only… and guess what? When we went there later on: hardly any ginger beer, especially no Mac’s ginger beer. I was devastated…and bought two bottles of another company.
In the afternoon we hopped into the car and drove down to Bluff peninsula with Simon and Liz to have a look around on the Bluff hill. We could see a few small islands nearby and Stewart Island on the horizon. The other guys wanted to go there the next day, but we had given up on the idea because of the high costs involved (160$ ferry only, plus a lot of water taxi tours etc.), so instead we just wanted to cross through the Catlins, a natural area on the coast set between Invercargill and Dunedin. Our first stop in the Catlins the next day was Slope Point, the Southern-most point on the Southern Island where there was a small sign indicating the equator and the South Pole (similar to the one on the Northern point on the North Island). All around was amazing nature: beaches, coves and of course the sea. While the sun was shining we could feel the cold breeze that would accompany us throughout the Catlins whenever we were at a beach. We took the coastal road being mostly gravel which took us again through hills with sheep and rainforest next to the road. After a short stop at Weir Beach, a tiny beach with a lush picknick area, where we had our lunch picknick (a classic one on a coloured spread, though made of plastic) we drove on to Curio Bay, which had been highly recommended by several people and so, yes, we were curious. We had been told that you could swim with dolphins there (for free, just like that) and that they had yellow-eyed penguins.
First we went on the dolphin side of the bay, called Porpoise Bay where there was also a camping. But the camping lady told us that, yes, there were heavy showers coming in that night and so we relinquished and tried to phone other accommodations, which either were fully booked or didn’t answer the phone. We said goodbye to the 2 dolphins swimming near the shore and tried the row of motels/hotels/beach houses that we had seen earlier on this bay. And YES, the very last one had a sign saying VACANCY, so we knocked. An elderly man answered us, but he was not the landlord but a guest who showed us around anyway and told us to fill in the form on the table. This stated that we could stay, write our name down (the only dorm was 30$ pp and nobody else in there) and call the owners. Cool! (The owners actually never showed up until after 10 am the next morning to collect payment of everybody (there was another German couple that arrived later) and further they didn’t really bother with the business. Come in – make yourself at home – the door was just open.
And the beach house was a dream, we could have spent weeks there, looking onto the bay from the living room and spotting some occasional animals around. It was called Catlins Beachhouse and is just gorgeous. In the garden I spotted a hedgehog which wandered around sniffing for insects and it reminded me a lot of the local kiwi.
The evening we spent with a warm blanket and a hot tea on the beach at Curio Bay where the yellow-eyed penguins are usually appearing between 7-9 pm. We waited a long time until one tiny penguin appeared in the far distance. He took a long time to freshen himself up and then making a very cute walk and hop to his home in the bushes next to the lookout. His home bay is actually a petrified forest which has turned to stone and is washed over every day by sea water.
After this we went back to the beach house and dropped directly into bed. The next morning we took a walk to the dolphins along our bay beach and enjoyed them a lot surfing the waves. There were some occasional swimmers (with and without wetsuit) who approached them and sometimes they got near to have a look at the humans, but we decided that it was much too cold to swim just in a bikini (especially when already threatened by a cold), so we just took lots of photos. In the afternoon we took a double tour about 20km away to two attractions near each other: McLean Falls and then Cathedral Coves. Both were about 40 min return and both took us through the natural rainforest of New Zealand, which is very wet, very green and very mossy. The McLean Falls were quite cool as they cascade in different small falls and over stone steps into a very broad fall.
The Cathedral Coves could only be reached at low tide, so around 6 pm that day, and lead us to a very broad sandy beach where at its end there were 2 tunnels in the rocks, meeting each other in the back. It really could have been a natural kind of church. After this we went back home again and after dinner it was again bedtime. It must be the sea air, that is making us that tired.
The next morning we took a detour to the camping ground again and explored the cliff there, but except some birds there was nothing special to see. So we drove further to the East, first having a very special bird’s concert at a small beach on the way. Then we visited Purakaunui Waterfalls, one of the most photographed waterfalls in New Zealand, I had read. Well, it looked a lot like the one the day before. Just a bit easier to reach and just one broad waterfall falling down stone steps. But it looked nice. After this we skipped a lot of the Catlins until we reached Nugget Point, where there is a lighthouse and many tiny rocky islands off shore that are called nuggets. We also visited Roaring Bay on the way to the lighthouse, where you normally can see penguins, but we just spotted our first sea lion who took a sunbath on the grass.
After this we headed onwards over Balclutha (having fantastic chips again – they are getting better as we go south) to Dunedin. We had just phoned earlier to Penny’s Backpackers and they had a special room for us, a bunk bed in a separate room, which was only 20 pp. Wow. They said it was their worst room. It was not. What was bad was the entire hostel. You could call it the weird people den and it was absolutely not very clean, for the rest it receives the mark ‘ok’. We could also not park our car nearby so the next morning we had to get up very earlier to set the car someplace else. After that we took some time off for ourselves. Writing, reading a book…lovely. Especially as it was raining outside most of the time and very very chilly. In the afternoon we managed to get up again and head towards the Otago Peninsula, which Dunedin is located next to. The drive was over a very windy road along the coast but the peninsula was such a contrast program to our Dunedin neighbourhood, which was very run down. We were in nature again and were heading to a penguin place, where they guaranteed you to actually see the rare yellow-eyed penguin. It did come with a price though, 52$ pp. But it was cool! A Maori named Tama took us around the sheep farm where they have built a penguin hospital and many secluded ways to watch the penguins from close-by without them spotting you. They are quite shy. First we went to the hospital where they help injured or underweight penguins. Mostly they have the yellow-eyed ones there, but there were also two other cute ones: a rock hopper and a fiordland crested penguin.
The free roaming penguins in the bay were mostly in moulting, which means that they changed their feathers so they would continue to be water-resistant. But it also meant that they were hiding away in the bushes waiting for their feathers to renew and not going out for a swim. We even met two couples in the bushes which were very cute with each other.
After having a chat with Tama after the tour we continued towards the cape Taiaroa Head, where there was the iciest wind blowing I had ever blown over me in summer.
After this we went to Allans Bay where they said you could see penguins and sea lions again. It was absolutely gorgeous, because it was huge with no other soul around, just two sea lions which we practically stumbled over. They were so cute sticking up their hand-fins and taking their beauty toilet seriously waggling their tails.
The next morning we wanted to take a look at downtown Dunedin before leaving. We actually ended up in the ‘octagon’, which is a kind of roundabout in the city center. We saw the famous Art Deco train station and went to the Art Museum. But the very best thing we did that morning was visiting a couple of OpShops (=second hand) trying on or browsing through the vintage clothes from the 70s. I ended up with a beautiful blue vintage suitcase and a blue handbag which should both fit with my 70s dress I had bought earlier. Yeah! I also donated the hand bag I had bought in Kuala Lumpur and felt mighty good about being rid of it.
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