More beautiful coastal scenery on the third leg of our New Zealand trip. The Catlins is a region of coastline lying between Dunedin and Invercargill. Great coastal scenery was on offer as well as quite a few waterfalls and forested areas. And this time we did see some penguins.
We headed down from Moeraki, back through Dunedin and then continued south to Balclutha for lunch and then into the Catlins. That afternoon we visited Tunnel Hill, Jacks Blowhole and Purakaunui Falls and then stayed at small, pleasant motor camp at Kaka Point.
On the second day of our visit, we started early, visiting the nearby Nugget Point. Here there is a lighthouse and a set of “nuggets” – small sea stacks.
Next was a visit to the incredible “Teapotland” – house in Owaka, with over 1000 teapots on display in the front yard, and then to Barrs Falls. Unfortunately, there was not much flow in the stream, but the rainforest was full of fungi.
We then headed to the Catlins River. We set up camp in a DOC campground and spent the afternoon walking up the beautiful river. Again there was a lot of fungi and slime moulds out.
The third day of the Catlins part of our trip featured more waterfalls. Firstly Matai Falls and Horseshoe Falls – both close together and more great rainforest and fungi, and later McLean Falls – probably the best waterfall of our visit. Between these waterfall visits we stopped off at the Lost Gypsy Gallery at Papatowai. This was a most interesting stop – and quite different to anything I have seen before. It is full of home made gadgets, often made from thrown out junk and many of them with switches to press, levels to pull or handles to turn, and then amazing and enchanting things happened!
We finished the day by staying at Curio Bay. The motor camp was daily basic, but it is close to a Yellow Eyed Penguin rookery. We sent a few hours watching some penguin chicks waiting for their parents to return from the sea, hopefully with food.
Our visit finished off with a very nice breakfast at the cafe at Niagara. And we also visited the nearby Niagara Falls – which are somewhat smaller than the more well known one in America.
More photos of the Catlins are online on this page and followed on a second page.