Day 49 – Dunedin to Invercargill

We left Dunedin at 8.30am and drove along the coast through the Catlins. The Catlins will probably be as far south as I will ever go, unless one day I end up in Antarctica but that’s unlikely to happen. We stopped at The Point for a hot drink and a toastie before heading a little further along the coast to do the lighthouse and clifftop walk. The clifftop point was SO windy, I couldn’t stay up there for long. At least the walk around to the lighthouse was ok, from there you could see what they call Nugget Point, it did just look like a bunch of golden nugget rocks in the sea. It is also 4,800km to the South Pole. The water was quite clear you could even see a few seals lying around.

We then stopped at another beach (a lot of these don’t have signs or he was babbling on too much I didn’t pay attention to what it was called) where within 30 seconds from the bus we came face to face with a sea-lion. Apparently these kind of lions are the rarest member of seals in the world, they are also the largest native animal in New Zealand. On the beach we saw quite a few more, some were lazing about on the beach whilst others were having a swim, so we had to be careful if and when they decided to come out of the water as they are known to attack because they feel threatened.

We then stopped in a nearby café on the way to Florence Hill for some so called traditional fish and chips, or fush and chups as they pronounce it, they don’t know how to make them like we do though!

Florence Hill was a beautiful lookout and on a really nice day I could see myself swimming in the beautiful blue sea and relaxing on the golden sands, it really did look appealing, unfortunately we didn’t have time or the weather for any of this, so it will carry on being a dream for now.

As you may have guessed today was a day for a lot of stops. I think Google told me you could drive from Dunedin to Invercargill in just under 3 hours and it took us something like 10 hours! I guess we took the coastal route and there may have been a different way but who knows! Next stop was in Lake Wilkie, here we went on a short boardwalk around part of the lake and through the forest. We saw some vines hanging from the trees and because of my name our driver told me I should live up to my name and swing on them… it didn’t look that safe so I decided to go with the fact my name isn’t spelt the same as a pretty good excuse not too.

McLean Falls was a slightly longer walk but by far the most impressive of the day. You could hear and smell the fresh water ages before you could see it, it really was refreshing. The falls went on forever, we climbed right to the top and it really was impressive, that’s about the only way I can describe it.

Our next stop was Curio Bay where we stopped for an ice cream; I decided to go for a Chocolate Truffle Magnum (yes dad, be very jealous), whilst eating this I got to enjoy the odd sightings of some Hector Dolphins. We then went over to another part of Curio Bay where penguins are normally spotted. This area is home to around 9 pairs of yellow-eyed penguins and we did manage to spot a couple but without binoculars they were quite hard to see! Today was definitely a wildlife day.

After a long day we arrived in Invercargill around 7.30 meaning most things were now closed, I still took a short walk around before it started to hammer it down. It’s a hard life that rain business; I don’t know how you’re living with it in the UK.