Dunedin, The Catlins, the Bluff!!! and Queenstown
Saturday 2nd to Tuesday 5th March 2013
Day of Trip = 63 – 66
No of Kms Driven so far: 6, 944
The south of the south! We planned to do a tramp up to
Mueller hut in Mt Cook national park…but the clouds came rolling in, so we will
try to come back to complete it on our way north. So instead of tramping it’s a
long drive all the way south to Dunedin. It’s right on ‘O week’ here and the
students are out in force – on our way to a café for lunch we narrowly avoid a
whole street of naked guys and girls prancing around tipsy…! Not really in the
mood to join them we drive around the peninsula to visit the Royal Albatross
colony.
Access is by a tour, but its only $40, and we get a lovely
old lady Pat to share her knowledge for an hour, and there’s only 4 of us in
the group too. It’s the only mainland
place these huge birds nest, and you really get up close and personal to their
homes through a glass building. We get to see fledgling furry chicks panting in
the heat, and adolescent albatross flying acrobatics. They are an amazing
seabird – spending most of their life at sea, just gliding in the air,
travelling to Chile in only 10 days, then further afield. They only hatch one
egg every two years, so we feel pretty privileged to see them up close and
personal.
We drive an hour and a half further south to the Catlins. It’s
a really rugged area of coastline here, and the weather is definitely getting
colder…only 12 degrees max! Brr! It’s also really windy. But we get to see some
amazing wildlife in their natural habitat…the world’s rarest penguin – the yellow
eyed penguin – just rocks up on the beach to its nest in the bushes, seemingly
unfazed by us standing several metres away. Awesome! Also just at the next bay
we spy Hectors dolphins, again incredibly rare, frolicking in the sea, riding
the waves, nursing their calves.
What is further south that the Catlins? Yup you guessed it…the
most southern tip of the south island…Slope Point (not the Bluff you ask? Slope
point actually has this honour). It’s a pretty cool feeling that we have
managed it…Cape Reinga to the Bluff, and most of the places in between! Woop
woop!
We really wanted to see Stewart Island this trip, but the
weather’s not really in our favour…its cold, wet and windy and the sea is
rolling…we are too jealous of everyone having such nice weather up north that
we decide we will just have to return again one day. So instead we head to
Queenstown for a couple of days of R & R
- it doesn’t disappoint! Haden even manages to squeeze another 4WD trip
in, up the Arrow Gorge to see an abandoned gold mining village (Macetown), with
a couple Lord of the Rings scenic shots thrown in.
