The Catlins

The weekend started by playing golf on Thursday and Friday. After procrastinating all week on weekend planning we finally decided roughly on a trip to the Catlins, a region covering the southeast corner of the South Island between Invercargill and Dunedin. Heather, Rob, Xander, and I left on Friday morning and drove straight to Invercargill (about a 2 and a half to three hour drive). We had lunch at Hell Pizza and went to some outdoor type stores. We found a really cheap portable stove that we’ll need when we’re doing all our hiking later in the semester. After leaving Invercargill we went down to Bluff and checked out the international signpost that stands near the second most southern point on the South Island. According to the sign New York is 15,008 km away from that point. The furthest city on the sign is London at 18,958 km. We took a little trail out to the actual point and back. After that we headed on the southern scenic route- some pretty winding, shady roads. We saw a lot of sheep- a few on the road itself. We stopped at Waipapa Point and went down to a beach near the lighthouse, where we saw a fur seal rolling around in the sand. We walked around on rocks and saw tide pools and lots of washed up, smelly seaweeds. We headed next to Curino Bay, where we decided to spend the night. We found the backpacker’s house right on the beach that one of our guidebooks recommended. Since the “town” of Curino Bay, maybe only consists of 100 people we drove 20 kms to Waikawa to a dairy where we bought groceries for snacking and breakfast the next day as well as some fish and chips for the nights meal. We drove back to Curino Bay and checked into our accommodation (By checking in I mean walking into the open beach house and calling to owners to tell them we’re staying there). There is a cat (Lilly) that pretty much lives at/around the house and hung out with us all night. That was pretty cool. Since it was dark by the time we actually got into the house we couldn’t really enjoy the beach that evening. We sat around our comfortable little house and played scrabble and golf the card game. Eventually we went to bed after standing around the world map in the bedroom discussing other sweet places we’d like to go for a while.

Sunday we all woke up early and watched the sunrise on the beach. It was perfect since the beach faces east and we could see it come up over the water and the hills on the other side of the bay. We were out on the beach for probably a half hour watching the whole thing. Then we made breakfast- egg and cheese sandwiches… delicious. We cleaned up and packed up and then made our way up the road to pay the owners of the place. It was only $22 per person for this great house all to ourselves. Amazing. Our first tourist activity of the day was to visit the Petrified Forest in Curino Bay. That was really cool- lots of tide pools and fossilized tree stumps and fallen tree trunks. We headed back on the southern scenic route and hit a bunch of points of interest along the south coast, slowly making our way back towards Dunedin. We took a 30-minute forest walk up to the McLean Falls, which turned out to be very cool (the highest part is 22 m). Also we stopped at another beach with sea lions and seals and went out to Nugget Point, where there is a lighthouse out on the small point overlooking small islets. They’re basically sedimentary rock formations pushed up vertically by tectonic activity- pretty cool looking. To get to most of these places we had to take sketchy dirt roads off of the main route, although they were very well maintained despite their winding, narrow nature. Eventually we made it back to Dunedin and rested since it was a fairly long day. Shayla, one of my Kiwi flatmates, made chicken and beef sushi. It’s cooked meat but then everything else is like sushi- I claim it’s not really sushi, however, it was tasty.

This is the last week of class before we go on our semester break. My last day of class this week is the 23rd, although I’m not going to class that day so it’s really the 22nd- the same day as the first day of class at the ole U of I. Wacky. I’m going up the west coast with Heather, Rob, and Xander and ending up at the Abel Tasman national park to do hiking and kayaking with the Arcadia group. It should be glorious. I hope everyone at school has a good first week and fun at quad day, etc. I know I’ll be having a good time on the epic journey that is the west coast. And if I’m lucky we won’t even have to go through the mines of Moria.