From Dunedin it was, according to me, just a short drive to the Catlins, the coastal area at the South-East tip of the South Island. But with sightseeing on the way and a long wait for coffee, it still took us the whole day to reach the lazy dolphin backpackers in Curio Bay. Right at the coast, views of the bay, its wildlife and surf, and generally in the middle of nowhere. Or perhaps rather the end of nowhere.
To maximize our wildlife spotting, we split up. Sandra and Marlies went looking for dolphins, (no luck) Thomas and me set out for the good old yellow-eyed penguin. They were supposed to land on top of a petrified forest, arguably the only of its kind in the world. At first I was a bit disappointed with the forest, I think the finest example of petrified forests I’ve seen so far was in Brasil, but after a while we started recognizing more and more tree stumps, wood-structures and fallen logs.
The place in itself was magical, with high waves, 
beautiful rocks, and a pink sunset. 
And yes, at some point a penguin came out of the bush and showed himself to us. We learned a new word, that I already forgot, describing that the penguins were changing from summer to winter feathers, and thus some of them weren’t fishing during the day because their feathers weren’t waterproof yet. Which explained why we saw some coming out of the bushes rather than out of the ocean.
When we started to walk back to the backpackers, another penguin came out of the water, and slowly started making its way to the bushline, where the other was still hopping about. For the longest time it seemed as if they were slooooowly hopping towards each other. Everyone got really excited about this romantic reunion after a hard day’s work, but in the end, the one penguin kept hopping to the ocean, and the other to the bush, and while passing they never really acknowledged each other. Nature knows no romance.
So we went back to the backpackers and for the first time during the trip cooked ourselves dinner. We then settled on the sofa and started playing a trivia game that was lying around. We were soon joined by 2 teenage Dutch backpackers. The guy was all the time genuinely amazed by our lack of political and geographical insights, whereas everyone tried to hide the fact that the girl was really really pretty ignorant on basically everything. At some point everyone in the room was more or less playing along and dishing out random bits of useless information, such as the Swedish guy on the largest bottle of champagne, and the German ecologist on capers. A great way to entertain a large group of diverse people.
The next day, we visited some waterfalls,
and one of the highlights of the trip: cathedral caves. I thought they were so so cool. They’re only accessible at low tide 
(that in itself is always exciting, the fear of getting trapped in a cave with the tide rushing in) and two are connected so that you can walk a really dark and wet part and get out through another cave. All travel guides recommend you bring a torch, which we forgot, so it was extra exciting.
While we were exploring another cave a bit further on from the main ones, I noticed something at the back of the cave. Something alive. Something vaguely familiar. A Penguin! It looked a bit lost, but then all penguins look perpetually lost on land, so we left it alone. By now we were getting a bit paranoid on the penguins though.
Despite several apples a day, we were all in varying degrees of sniffiness and so after another healthy home-cooked dinner we went to bed early. More road-trippin’ coming up.
To maximize our wildlife spotting, we split up. Sandra and Marlies went looking for dolphins, (no luck) Thomas and me set out for the good old yellow-eyed penguin. They were supposed to land on top of a petrified forest, arguably the only of its kind in the world. At first I was a bit disappointed with the forest, I think the finest example of petrified forests I’ve seen so far was in Brasil, but after a while we started recognizing more and more tree stumps, wood-structures and fallen logs.
The place in itself was magical, with high waves, 
beautiful rocks, and a pink sunset. 
And yes, at some point a penguin came out of the bush and showed himself to us. We learned a new word, that I already forgot, describing that the penguins were changing from summer to winter feathers, and thus some of them weren’t fishing during the day because their feathers weren’t waterproof yet. Which explained why we saw some coming out of the bushes rather than out of the ocean.When we started to walk back to the backpackers, another penguin came out of the water, and slowly started making its way to the bushline, where the other was still hopping about. For the longest time it seemed as if they were slooooowly hopping towards each other. Everyone got really excited about this romantic reunion after a hard day’s work, but in the end, the one penguin kept hopping to the ocean, and the other to the bush, and while passing they never really acknowledged each other. Nature knows no romance.
So we went back to the backpackers and for the first time during the trip cooked ourselves dinner. We then settled on the sofa and started playing a trivia game that was lying around. We were soon joined by 2 teenage Dutch backpackers. The guy was all the time genuinely amazed by our lack of political and geographical insights, whereas everyone tried to hide the fact that the girl was really really pretty ignorant on basically everything. At some point everyone in the room was more or less playing along and dishing out random bits of useless information, such as the Swedish guy on the largest bottle of champagne, and the German ecologist on capers. A great way to entertain a large group of diverse people.
The next day, we visited some waterfalls,
and one of the highlights of the trip: cathedral caves. I thought they were so so cool. They’re only accessible at low tide 
(that in itself is always exciting, the fear of getting trapped in a cave with the tide rushing in) and two are connected so that you can walk a really dark and wet part and get out through another cave. All travel guides recommend you bring a torch, which we forgot, so it was extra exciting.
While we were exploring another cave a bit further on from the main ones, I noticed something at the back of the cave. Something alive. Something vaguely familiar. A Penguin! It looked a bit lost, but then all penguins look perpetually lost on land, so we left it alone. By now we were getting a bit paranoid on the penguins though.
Despite several apples a day, we were all in varying degrees of sniffiness and so after another healthy home-cooked dinner we went to bed early. More road-trippin’ coming up.
