Latest Adventures

We were in the Catlins for a few days and while it boasts lovely natural beauty like McLean Falls, Porpoise Bay and lots of wildlife, it does not have any services like a supermarket or phone. We were in the Waiwaka Museum (which was more like a grandparent's attic) and asked about a phone or Internet. It was my Grandma Jane's 90th birthday celebration back home and I wanted to call in and give my best. Oh my how the older ladies there got excited and asked me a dozen questions about her! Meanwhile, Jim, an older man who lives across the street, said he had Internet with a mic/webcam. Wow, I thought, impressive in this town! He invited us over to try it out (because we HAVE to call Grandma on her special day). Pretty funny, here we were in this old man's house, but unfortunately it didn't work and we left him a few bucks anyway. Luckily, Andy and I made a short video for Grandma wishing Happy 90 and I understand from my brother Brian while the technology confused her, it quickly subsided as she began to get teary.

The best part about our experience in the Catlins was the wildlife. We camped right on the beach and woke up to the sounds of the ocean. In Porpoise Bay we saw Hector's Dolphin's, the rarest and smallest dolphins in the world. There are only ~4,000 left and they all hover around NZ's coastlines. The pod was jumping and playing in the gentle waves as we watched through binoculars. On the same coastline there is one of the world's oldest fossilized forests at 180 million years during the Jurassic Age. This is one of the places that shows proof that NZ used to be part of Gondwanaland - the ancient supercontinent made up of NZ, Australia, South America and India (if not more). As we walked along we saw another creature that turned out to be a giant Hooker's Sea Lion (another rare breed) sunning on the beach. He was rolling around in some seaweed apparently trying to get comfortable. We could get up pretty close to him, thankfully he wasn't hungry. It is so neat how uncrowded these places are - we had the whole bay to ourselves!

We continued on to a few waterfalls, the most impressive called McLean Falls. After our experience in Milford, waterfalls seem like an every day common occurance! The surrounding podocarp forest was very different than the beech forest in Fiordland but just as lovely. Another fun fact - 28 species of fern live in the Catlins area alone - amazing amounts of flora and that's just the ferns! We just kept driving along, looking at the guidebook and stop and check something out as it came along, a very leisurely and comfortable way to travel. We never know what will be around the next turn. Like when we were headed down a dirt/gravel road to see Nugget Point and suddenly a giant flock of sheep was rumbling towards us! We were dying laughing as Andy carefully maneuvered around them. I never knew that sheep actually have different looking faces.

I napped while Andy drove us up to the next big city - Dunedin. We are here now and have been already for a couple of days. It was an old European settlement with mostly Scottish influence so architectually it reminds me of a European city. We are in a cabin and enjoying the nightly warmth and the small pleasure of a TV! It's got an interesting city center that is in the shape of an octogon. There is an arts and music festival in town called "Dunedin Fringe" that is hosted by the university (the oldest in NZ). We saw a university theatre performance last night called FOLD, which blew our minds in a what the eff? kind of way. A 60 minute interpretation of the white, middle-class demographic and its values, or lack thereof. It defintely left us all in the crowd (maybe 50 of us?) smiling wryly and wondering to ourselves as we left the old French building. Fun to get out into the town scene a bit though. Our Dunedin Holiday Park is just on the edge of town, so we are close to the city life and the peninsula which is cool. I have definitely enjoyed the days we spend in the countryside more than those in the city, but a day without sheep ain't so baaaaaa-d after all. :) They are truly everywhere as you hear about.