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Published: April 18th 2009
Surat Bay
A male sealion. These guys are massive!Nibby- Moving on from Dunedin we headed further south to the Catlin Coast. I hadn't travelled here before so it was a new experience for the both of us. The Catlin coast is thriving with wildlife.
The first place we stopped off was Surat Bay where we found some massive male sealions chilling on the beach. For ages we wondered what the difference was between NZ fur seals and sealions and now we know! Sealions are so big and the guys have manes which the seals don't have. The weather wasn't the best so we didn't hang around for long. Further along the coast we stopped off at a waterfall which was pretty cool because it had been raining quite a bit. We found a lovely little backpackers to stay at near Curio Bay that only slept 8 people and had an open fire which we took full advantage of. A couple that were staying in the hostel were telling us that they had been down to the Bay that morning and had swam with the local dolphins who inhabit Porpoise Bay. Matt and I got rather excited about this so first thing the next morning we headed down to
Surat Bay
Just woken up (and vomited... nice!) the bay with our wetsuits on and our surf boards in tow and got in the freezing cold water. It wasn't long before we were surrounded by Hector's Dolphins, the smallest in the world and native to New Zealand. It was incredible, they seemed to be interested in my flippers and were coming up so close to my board I could have touched them! Next to me, under me, in front of me, and there were so many of them! They weren't at all shy. I enjoyed it so much that we ended up hanging around for another 2 days and got in 2 more swims with the dolphins. Matt was happy too because there was surf in the bay so he kept himself busy.
On one afternoon after our swim with the dolphins, we went on a hunt to find a museum we had been told about. It was called Curious. It's really hard to try and explain what it was like. This guy makes really weird intricate mechanical “things” out of old bikes, cans, shells, coins, basically anything he can get his hands on. There was one piece which was a sheep skeleton on a bike and
Surat Bay
Two posing nicely for us when you turned the handle the sheep began ridding the bike and “baaing”! It was really fun and a great rainy day activity.
We also visited the Petrified Forest by Curio Bay. It was a really interesting place to visit. In the rocks surrounding the sea were what looked like tree stumps and tree trunks, but they were actually made of stone - confused you say - well, several thousands of years ago a forest stood here, there was a massive volcanic eruption and the shock wave knocked over the trees. The volcanic ash and lava ran down to the forest and settled on the trunks injecting them with silica and turning them into fossils. These fossils are in the rock and have become the rock itself. It was really really cool I hope my attempt at explaining it is good enough. If not you can always look it up on trusty old google!
The time came when we decided that we had bothered the dolphins enough so we packed up and were ready to move on. Matt felt that it was about time he added some drama to the trip so when he was munching on his
Surat Bay
They use the claws on their back flippers to scratch themselves Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes his bridge(false teeth) fell out... now that's a scary sight! It was the first time I had seen old gappy in almost 3 years of us being together but I soon got used to it. We tried to find a dentist in Invercargill, which was the next town of any substance that we came to but, as luck would have it, it was a Sunday! Matt decided he wasn't too bothered so we trucked on up to the wonderful wilderness of the Fiordland.
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