Day 4- Catlins Part 2

 After our walk along the beautiful bays, we buckled down for the long drive across the island to Te Anau.  We had originally planned to stop in Invercargill, which is the closest larger town to Stewart Island,  but we decided we wanted to power through as far as James would let us.  Along the way we took the slightly longer, more scenic road along the Southern Scenic Route, which is what we were driving on the majority of the time anyway.

We planned a couple of stops along the way, like to Purkaunui Falls, supposedly the 'most photographed falls in NZ'.  Your guess is as good as mine for how to pronounce that.  They were pretty but we were surprised they were the most photographed since we have definitely seen more beautiful falls since we've been here.  We're assuming it is because they are so accessible- only a 10 minute return (they use the word 'return' here instead of 'round trip').

Next stop was Curio Bay where there is a penguin rookery.  We only saw one Yellow-Eyed Penguin, and because they are one of the rarest penguins in the world their habitats are very closely guarded.  The rookery was all roped off so I sweet-talked the ranger into lending me his binoculars so I could see it closer.  And by 'sweet-talked' I mean he was lending them to anyone nearby who asked.  I think my days of fluttering the ol' eyelashes to get what I want are over when I have a baby on the hip.  The rookery is located on the shore on top of an old petrified forest.  If you look closely in the last picture below you can see the straight lines in the 'rocks' that are actually petrified fallen trees.

 Guess how old those conifer trees/rocks are?  160 million years!!  We're talking dinosaurs, people.  It is one of very few petrified forests this old in the world.  Neato!

Onward to Slope Point, the southern-most point on the South Island mainland.  At this point the only land further south than us were Stewart Island (NZ), Chile, Argentina, and Antarctica (minus the sporadic island dotted here and there).  It was extremely windy, causing the trees to grow in a windswept manner.

It was beautiful and desolate feeling.  We were the only ones at the point for a short while and we enjoyed the romance of feeling all alone.

After a stopover in Invercargill for dinner we were able to make it to Mossburn Country Park to spend the night.  The roads in this area are very flat so there is a new Around the Mountains Cycle Trail that joined up with our driving route.  There were quite a few small one-person tents pitched with bikes next to them at the holiday park.  We were up very early the next morning because we had a long drive to Milford Sound, but they were already gone.  It would be beautiful country to bike through and the weather was perfect.
On a side note, I totally forgot to report on the extremely entertaining episode (for me) of watching Lance try to put up our campervan's sunshade. It happened the night before, but deserves a couple pictures.

You would probably look at those pictures and say, "Hmm, looks like Maggie put them up in reverse order."  But you would be wrong.  The harder he tried, the worse it got.  We finally gave up and decided a tree was enough shade for us.  We ran into another family (also with a 7-month old son) who was in the same Spaceship as us, and they complained about the sunshade as well.  Turns out they had the same problems as us so Lance isn't completely incompetent after all...

Day 4- Catlins Part 1

The morning of day 4 we were looking forward to walking the beaches nearby.  The woman at the Holiday Park front desk showed us how it was connected to the hike we wanted to do, so that was rather convenient.  We wanted to walk beaches of Surat Bay (named after a ship wrecked off the coast) and Cannibal Bay (after a surveyor found human remains there, not cannibal related).  We were hoping to see sea lions and we were rewarded multiple times over for our efforts.

The sea lions camouflaged in pretty well with the debris washed up on shore, so sometimes we were on top of them before we noticed.

This guy had places to be.  He would walk a couple meters, then flop down in a very exaggerated manner for a minute or two before starting the process again.  He was hilarious to watch.

Walk, walk, walk...

...flop.

This guy was HUGE.

 We were able to capture the sea lions running around.  I think two males started to run at each other but then the smaller one veered away.

After our Surat Bay walk we had to cross over a peninsula to get to Cannibal Bay.  It was a lovely peninsula of sand and yellow flowers.  On the way back we decided to hike up to the peak of the peninsula.  Those pictures come later.

Cannibal Bay

On the way back to Surat Bay we encountered some locals coming back from the peninsula.  We hadn't originally planned to go up there since it was fenced off and there weren't any paths, but the locals said that the view was worth it and the farmer who owned the property didn't care.  There was an electric fence around the property but they assured us it wasn't active.  After we parted ways we considered the chances they were having fun with us and thought we could use a little electric jolt, but we took our chances and turned out it wasn't turned on.  Lucky us.  Up the peninsula we went, which provided some fantastic views and a cove with lovely rock formations.

 Upon our return from the peninsula we discovered the sea lions had decided to relocate...right where the path spits out onto the beach.  Good thing we didn't leave our shoes there like originally discussed or we may have had to tug them out from under from rather large behinds.

In total I think we saw about a dozen sea lions, which made me pretty darn happy!  Now if only James had been awake for any of it...