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Published: October 19th 2008
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Leg Eight: The Catlins
We drove along the scenic highway stopping at lots of interesting places. The first was home to sealions, although none were at home when we got there 😞 We carried on driving to a penguin and dolphin colony where we were to spend the night but still saw nothing (spotting a theme yet with wildlife??). The views were all spectacular overlooking some rough seas and calm bays. At Slope point we walked along the beach where we found some sealions lazing in the sunshine oblivious to the tourists taking photos. It was then onto Nugget point, home of the yellow eyed penguins. We stayed for a few hours in the hope of spotting some of the rarest penguins in the world but none came in before we left. We drove north to Dunedin, a very Scottish settlement where we had a wander around to stretch our legs and look for fish and chips but the only ones we could find were also chinese takeaways which neither of us fancied. We continued driving keeping our eyes peeled and finally saw a neon sign saying 'open'. It had just closed! We found another that was still open
Moeraki Boulders
Paul flying!! we stole this pose from our japanese friends x in the next town and enjoyed chips in the van. We camped near the Moeraki boulders for the night wanting to see them in the morning. They are large boulders that had been shaped by years of sea exposure and we wandered along the beach to see them.
Leg Nine: Wildlife Adventures
As we drove through Oamaru we saw signs for penguin colonies and so we headed to them, our hopes not too high after the previous attempts at viewings. We pulled up at the visitor centre where we were again told that the little blue ones come ashore at dusk and so we stayed around in the town (the only victorian one in the country). We spent the day shopping followed by a game of ten-pin bowling and table football before heading back to the colonies. Just up the road there was also a yellow-eyed penguin colony and so we ehaed there first where we found a guy from Glasgow called Colin who came to watch the penguins every day! He kindly lent us his binoculars so that we could spot them coming into shore, wandle along the beach and then climb to their nests in
the hillsides. We managed to see about 10 of them come in. We then headed to the blue penguins where we sat in a grandstand and watched rafts of about 30 at a time come ashore and scale the rocks to their nest boxes in the bush. In all we saw 160 come in with some coming fairly close to the viewing area. At only 30cm tall they were very small but cool to see. After the evening show we drove towards Christchurch and Akaroa for our next adventure! We stopped in a Christchurch for a look around (very English!) and to swap our leaking water bottle from the campervan before driving out to Akaroa. We boarded the catamaran that took us out to the mouth of the bay where we spotted the dorsel fins bobbing on the surface. Having donned our wesuits on shore we slowly climbed into the water (very cold) and waited for the dolphins to come in closer. We stayed in the water for about half an hour with dolphins swimming around us and through the middle of the group. We weren't allowed to touch them since they are easily damaged but they found us all
Niagara Fall 2 ;)
an attempt at sarcasm and humour by the locals as this waterfall is actually so small we could hardly spot it! extremely intriguing and came very close to our legs. On the return to the shore the dolphins swam ahead of us surfing on the dense water and leaping from the water. It was amazing!! Stopping for food as we came back through Christchurch we continued North, our wildlife adventures at an end.
It didn't seem possible that we were almost at the end of the south island part of our journey as we continued north through Kaikoura (we had decided that the cost of whale watching was too much) and into Marlborough. The landscape was vastly different here with the many NZ wineries located nearby and almost desert like land. We stopped at one winery to have a sample which was very nice but decided to continue up to Picton and make the journey across the sounds. We managed to squeeze onto the earlier ferry, taking up the final 5m of ship space when we checked in and had another smooth crossing with two movies to entertain us.
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