We were still feeling a little shell shocked this morning as the result of the earthquake in Christchurch starts to hit home. We were due there on Saturday but spent some time trying to decide how we could avoid the city. We e-mailed Saga Independent and made some suggestions about our last few days.
Thank you to all the people that have contacted us to ensure that we are safe.
We left Invercargill at 10 am having breakfasted in the lodge. The owners cooked breakfast for Ian and brought it to the door at 8 am along with muesli, fruit, yoghurt and toast for me.
We followed the Southern Scenic Road out of Invercargill and followed the coast.
We considered visiting Waipapa Point but as it was 14km on grit road we decided to carry on. (There is a ship wreck at this point but it is only visible at low tide.)
We passed a road sign for Dead Horse Road!!
We drove through Fortrose and, as we did so, this main state highway became a gravel road!
It was 4 km from the main road down to Slope Point and we decided to make the journey. The road had intermittent lengths of tarmac road of about 200m but the rest of it was quite bad (as judged by Linda; Ian was in rally mode – almost as fast on the gravel as on tarmac). (Slope Point is the most southerly point of New Zealand and as we had visited Cape Reinga it would have been rude not to visit Slope Point.) We each had our photograph taken by the sign post pointing to the Equator and the South Pole.
The waves were crashing onto the rocks and Ian enjoyed taking photos (surprise, surprise!).
Back on the main road (well it is going somewhere but still gravel) we came to one area that was prone to Tidal Flooding! Thankfully we were OK.
From there we drove to Curio Bay which contains an area of petrified forest, a particularly fine example of fossilised jurassic trees and stumps that are clearly visible at low tide.
In this area there are also the very rare yellow-eyed penguins and we were very lucky to find one on the beach. Normally, you see them at dawn, when they leave their chicks to collect food, and at dusk when they return. At this time of year the penguins begin to moult and lose their waterproof feathers so they don’t venture into the water. The one we saw must have just started moulting.
Driving to the east of Curio Bay we came to Porpoise Bay which is the home, not to porpoises, but to the small Hector Dolphins. They live right in the bay and if people swim they will approach the swimmers to play. We were lucky enough to spot about four of these dolphins but they weren’t close enough to get good photographs.
Travelling along the coast road Linda spotted her first ever Kingfisher and was VERY thrilled.
We stopped for coffee at The Happy Frog Café but decided not to go to the Maclean Falls as it would have taken us about an hour so pressed on north-eastwards.
We did have a quick stop at Florence Hill Lookout to admire the coastline from a high vantage point.
A few km further on we turned off the “main road” again to visit the Purakaunui Falls; only 10 minutes walk through rain forest to reach these. We were not the only visitors; a party of junior school children with teachers/parents were just ahead of us and by the time we reached the falls, the children had stripped off to their swimsuits and were getting scored by the adults for entering the water and standing under the falls. No risk assessments in NZ!
In Owaka we stopped for a photo opportunity of Teapot Land. This was next door to Dollyworld!!!
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Several km further down the gravel track we rejoined the tarmac but not for long. We turned off again, this time to Nugget Point. After parking we had a kilometre walk to the light house on the point. The scenery was, of course, magnificent but the main draw for us was to see the hundreds of seals on the rocks below the windblown point. The geology on the point was particularly outstanding with the rock strata of “the nuggets” lying in a vertical plane.
Back on to tarmac, we finished off with a straight run to Dunedin stopping only for fuel after the car beeped at us that we were about to run out (after filling we calculated there had been about 8l in the tank and therefore enough to get us to Dunedin but better safe than sorry).
We checked in at the Mercure to find a letter waiting for us from Saga’s agent in NZ offering to make alternative for us in lieu of Christchurch. After 2 phone calls that has been done and we will now stop in Timaru. Parking would have been a problem for us so we had to pay the “nominal charge” of $20 per night for valet parking in the hotel carpark.
We went to Speight’s Ale House attached to the brewery and had one of our best priced meals yet.
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