Invercargill (9 Dec 2010)

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Thursday 9th December 2010 (Dunedin – Invercargill)

Jamie had his work Christmas party last night, so we were blessed with a new driver Josh, who had driven various tour groups before, but as this was his first solo voyage on the bottom bus he seemed to really enjoy it with us.

Starting with Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world, we ran to the top breathless and panting for 10 minutes after. After this the real tour began with a drive through the beautiful Catlins on South Coast where we visited Nugget Point which was littered with fur seals and a light house.

Slightly further up the coast we were guided along a short beach where we saw a lone sea lion up close. Josh made sure we stayed an appropriate distance away so it didn't feel threatened and charge. After this first one, we walked through the dunes onto a longer beach where 2 more sea lions were lying, at this point Josh left us to get the minibus and we walked for half an hour all the way along to the other end of the beach, where we saw one more which appeared to be a pup as it was quite small in comparison to the others. Joanne had to keep an eye on two of the younger lads from our bus who had dropped back from the rest of the group as they seemed to be hovering ever closer to the pup and she thought she overheard them talking about slapping it on the back... She did her motherly duty and explained to them they shouldn't get any closer as it could hurt them if it charged, and stayed close until they left.

Our next short stop was a little hike to McClean falls, where Joanne had fun playing with the settings on her camera to capture the cascading waterfalls.

Next, onto Curio Bay, we didn't see any dolphins, but were lucky enough to see a rare Yellow-Eyed Penguin, which unfortunately was being blocked from getting back to it's nest with food for its baby by a group of tourists taking photos who didn't think to give it some space. There was also an amazing fossilised forest in the stones we were walking over - you could actually see the grains of the bark in the rock.

After a wonderful but long day, we checked in to Tuatara Hostel which was above a pool hall, it was late so we cooked dinner and found it was almost time for bed.

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