(Blogspot is being a little difficult tonight. For the pictures that go with this post, see my Facebook page.)
Sunday, June 24
Finishing the Catlins
There were three stops on our itinerary for the day: Cathedral Cove, Surat Bay and Nugget
Point then head toward Dunedin.
The drive through the Catlins is beautiful! Sometimes we
drove through green valleys, sometimes through winding forests. Sheep dot the hills. If there isn’t a small town a farm caps
a ridge. We’d left the high
mountains behind; these emerald, steep hills were almost as beautiful.
Cathedral cove is an accessible at low tide. We weren’t sure when low tide was (we’d
been out of cell and internet range for at least 24 hors), but we thought we’d
drive in and give it a try. The
entrance was closed off; we went on.
Surat Bay is a sleepy little community of mostly B&Bs
and a few farms. We parked the motor home at a community parking spot (I use
that term loosely; it was mostly just a wide spot not used by the hotel on one
side and the farmer on the other).
Looking out over the bay, there were two
ways to go, on a path through the dunes or across the beach. The tide was out,
there was plenty of sand to walk on, so we picked the beach. In the 1880s a ship
wrecked off this beach; it’s also the home of sea lions. We walked about a quarter of a mile,
then the beach takes a turn and the bay opened before us. We walked another quarter of a mile,
disappointed we didn’t see seal lions.
We walked a bit further towards a tree trunk and a big piece of driftwood. A little closer to the driftwood and it
we started looking a little closer.
When the driftwood took a deep breath and finally moved its flipper, we
realized we’d come across a huge, sleeping sea lion. Satisfied, we headed back. It’s a good thing we did head
back, because as we rounded the cover to finish the last of the beach there was
only about ¼ of the sand left to walk on.
Near the end, I had to head into the rocks to stay above the incoming
surf. Safely back at the car, we headed to our last stop, Nugget Point, which
was supposed to be another good spot for viewing penguins. Yet another
ill-fated stop. The road to nugget
point was 8 km of gravel road riding up and down the face of the cliff. Finally at the car park at 4:45 p.m.,
the lighthouse was a 1 km walk uphill and it’s dark by 5 p.m. One look at the
trail down to the beach and I knew I’d never make it out the door let alone to
the trailhead. I climbed into the
back of the motor home for the return trip and we headed to Balcultha for the
night. (We met the caretakers from Gunn Lake Holiday Park coming off the beach
at Surat Bay. They told us they
hadn’t seen any sea lions.)
We’ve stayed is some really great campgrounds. Mostly gorgeous settings and those that
weren’t had amenities that more than made up for the location. This campground
had neither setting nor amenities, but they did have electricity and
water. In for the night.
Monday, June 25
Dunedin: the
home of Cadbury Chocolate!
Scottish settlers heavily influence the south end of the
south island. Nowhere is that so apparent than Dunedin. We set the i-Site as our destination
and arrived in downtown Dunedin around 12:30 p.m. The center point is
called the octagon. We were immediately wowed by the 19th century
architecture. Our immediate need
included a bathroom and so our that’s where our search started. In a weird twist of events, Jim and I
took two directions with the i-Site as our meeting point (I had to go to the bathroom; Jim
had to pay the parking meter). There was not restroom at the i-Site. The pharmacist next door sent me around
the corner to a multilevel car park.
So I got a quick tour of the area and then met Jim at our original
destination. He picked up a
handful of brochures and we went next door for a soda and some table space to
check out what Dunedin had to offer. The city sits on the Otaga Peninsula and
at the head is a colony of Royal Albatross. There are two roads to get there,
one that drives the rim of the bay and another that goes across the ridge of
the mountains. The GPS picked the
mountain road. I cannot deny the
beauty of what we saw, but ended up spending most of my time in complete and
utter fear. We took the coast road
on the return.
The Royal Albatross Sanctuary is a private reserve that
protects a colony of 24 mating pairs and 18 chicks. Their wing span is 3 meters
(9’ 6”) and their bodies are only about 1 m (3’) long. They’re soaring birds,
using ocean currents breezes to travel. The colder and windier the better for
the albatrosses, according to our guide. We watched a ten-minute video. The most interesting thing we learned
is that they cover half of the southern hemisphere, flying from NZ to South
America to South Africa and back again. The first five to 7 years of their life
is spent flying over the ocean. The ocean is their home during that time. They return to their breeding ground to
mate and raise their chick. A breeding cycle is one year, then the pair goes
off for a year on holiday. The chick fledges in September, no practice, no
flight school, literally fly or die.
From the observatory we saw five chicks. Downy and white,
they sit on their nests for one more month doubling their body size. Their
parents will begin to land further and further away from them, forcing them to
beginning moving and loosing that excess body weight. Soon we saw some adults
soaring above the cliff. They
circle several times then land. We watched one parent feed his chick. Once
finished, the parent flies off again for 1-3 days. Our tour continued with a
the army barracks built into the head.
They had a disappearing gun there, instilled some time during 1886 and
last used in 1949. We headed back
to the car park and spent time watching the sunset behind the lighthouse and
the albatrosses soaring overhead. Back in Dunedin we settled at another Top 10
park. Not as busy, but just as
beautiful.
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