The Catlins

This weekend, we set out in a rental car for the Catlins, a region on the south east coast of the south island, about an hour an a half south of Dunedin. Our first stop was Nugget Point, where the rocks are in the formation of chicken nuggets.

We also walked down to Roaring Bay, a prime penguin spotting location. Unfortunately, we were there in the middle of the day which is not prime penguin viewing time, but, as we were hanging out on the beach, one rogue penguin did appear out of the surf on the other side of the bay. I wish my camera had a better zoom, but, if you look closely you can see that it is a yellow-eyed penguin.

Driving down to the Catlins was fun, especially driving on the left side of the road. Far more difficult than remembering to take wide right hand turns was trying not to turn on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal. Also challenging: navigating around stampedes of sheep.

Get out of the road!

We camped at a Department of Conservation campsite at Purakaunui Bay. The view from out tent site was awesome -- better than a 5 star hotel.

Here is a picture of our tents and our sexy rental car.

And a lovely sunrise that we had at our campsite.

On Saturday we drove south, stopping along the way for a few short walks. We saw waterfalls and petrified forests at Curio Bay. We didn't see dolphins at Porpoise Bay unfortunately, but we had a lot of fun at Cathedral Caves.

We also went all the way down to Slope Point -- the southern most point on the south island.

Here is a picture of the intrepid crew at Slope Point:

The five of us really enjoyed the fantastic weather we had in the Catlins. Camping was really fun and we made some excellent camp food including, Mexican night with tortillas and re-fried beans and we had a vegetable stir fry with quinoa and tomato sauce. Yum. (More pictures coming soon.)