After an amazing time on the peninsula, we continued our journey south along the southern scenic highway and boy did it live up to it's name!
We made a quick pit stop in Dunedin to walk up the worlds steepest street. Honestly, you can't even imagine the incline of this street. From the bottom, the top section of the road looked almost vertical! We managed to walk up along with the many crazy drivers revving their cars so to reach the top - I'm pleased we left the van at the bottom. On the way back down we picked up our certificate, yes really, just in case you didn't believe us! Apparently there's a race every year called the gutbuster where people run up and down the street for fun, they must be mad!
Thanks to the good old lonely planet guide and the mass of leaflets we've managed to accumulate, we set out towards the catlins. It's an area renowned for fantastic scenery and wildlife encounters so we were both really looking forward to exploring the area.
Following our guide books, we pulled off the highway to make the perilous and somewhat bumpy drive to Nugget point. I'm loving driving the van but on nice smooth Tarmac roads, not narrow gravel tracks! The view from the lighthouse at the top was well worth the drive despite being battered by the wind. We found some shelter in the bird hide just before dusk to watch the yellow eyed penguins ride the waves back to dry land and waddle to their nests. We didn't have the best view due to gigantic zoom lenses and tripods everywhere you moved but we were pleased to catch a glimpse of a few before heading to our campsite for the night.
The next day, in search of our daily coffee fix, we found quite possibly the weirdest front garden we've ever seen. The garden was named 'teapot land' and was crammed full of any and every type of teapot you could think of, all neatly stacked and 'artistically' arranged around a water feature, strange people!
We continued along the scenic highway and stupidly decided to visit every 'brown tourist signed' attraction that we came to on the drive to our next campsite. It seemed like a great idea at the time..... We visited 4 waterfalls (all very beautiful and hidden deep inside amazing forests), 1 blowhole (a subterranean cave where the roof has collapsed), 2 beaches (deserted but lovely) and an old disused tunnel (creepy with a good echo). By the time we reached our campsite at curio bay we were exhausted! I was very excited though as we found out that there were penguins making an appearance down at the beach. We rushed down there and soon found ourselves up close and personal with the penguins. It was So much better than the day before as we were pretty much stood right next to them on the beach instead of being crammed into a bird hide. A Truly amazing experience and even better that it was all for free, no tours needed, bonus!
The following morning at low tide, we checked out the 'petrified fossil forest'. Basically it's a whole load of tree stumps and trunks that have been fossilised and uncovered by the sea. Tom loved it and spent ages clambering across the rocks and fossils whereas I spent my time watching out for more penguins!! We also ventured to the cathedral caves, which again can only be seen at low tide. They were huge caves in the cliff faces and got pretty dark and scary the further back you went. We forgot to take a torch, typical so ventured as far as we dared before chickening out and heading back! Our last stop on the catlins scenic trail was slope point, the most southernly point of the country. We took the obligatory photos as we stared out into the vast ocean in front of us. Crazy to think that the next land mass you would reach would be the antarctic!
Having fully experienced the catlins, we headed towards a place called te anau on the heart of fiordland. The landscape here was just amazing and I found it difficult to concentrate on the driving as all I wanted to do was take it all in. Luckily, there were lots of stops and Tom took lots of photos along the way, in fact I actually can't stop him taking photos (he's taken over my job!)
After checking out the town, we made our way to a place called rainbow reach (where there was actually a rainbow) to attempt to walk a section of the famous keppler track. It was a beautiful walk through forests and past some lord of the rings filmsets! Although I have to be honest, most of the scenery in NZ looks as though it's straight from the lord of the rings movie so who's to know the difference?!?
Having recovered from our walk the previous day, we set out on a 2 hour journey along the Milford highway. It is supposed to be one of the best drives in the world and we can definitely see why! The drive takes you into the heart of fiordland and allows you to access the stunning Milford sound at the end. The drive was pretty scary at times, horrifically windy roads and a huge dark tunnel that seemed vertical at points, through a mountain. We booked ourselves onto a scenic cruise and spent the next few hours being wowed by the completely amazing scenery. I don't think the photos do it justice at all. The sheer size of the fiord, the mountains and huge waterfalls either side was incredible! We were also lucky enough to spot some dolphins and seals from the top deck of the boat too. All in all a fantastic experience that I would totally recommend!
So that's us up to date for now and a very rare update from me I know, will have to pull my finger out! We are both happy, healthy and still very much living the dream :)
Love to you all, shello & Tommo x x x x
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