Crapping on a yak.....overland to the other side of the world and the rest: Day 242 – 31 March 2010: Cathedral Caves, ‘Niagara Falls’, more seals, dolphins, the southern-most point of New Zealand, and a Morris Minor collection

After a morning walk around the bay and a discovery of a coast side waterfall, we continue onwards and our first stop is to visit Cathedral Caves on the Catlins Coast. These are set on an unspoilt beach surrounded by tropical vegetation, though we are some way south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The caves are only accessible for two hours around low tide, and we are just in time to visit.

Traces of the outgoing tide line the beach with intriguing rubber gimp mask like seaweed scattered on the sand. Caz leads us into the first visible entrance to the cave, which involves climbing over narrow rocks to evade a pond of sea water blocking the entrance. Caz is small and agile, but you know when slow drivers scare you because they are so nervous that they people do things so carefully you just know that something will go wrong? This is what Mary is like as a negotiator of the rock. Her knees tremble herself into the pond with a splash. I manage to evade the pond, spurred on by the desire not to see my fourth camera of this trip expire. Once inside we realise we could have just walked into the cave from the other end. There’s something about caves that entices me. It might be the mystery of them, it might be the tranquillity of them contrasting with the violence through which they are formed, but I come out feeling contented as well as refreshed by the brisk sea air.

Our next stop is the ‘Niagara Falls of New Zealand’. Though these are sign posted as an attraction and are marked on the atlas, these turn out to be a surveyor’s prank, as the ‘falls’ amount to nothing more than a naturally formed step in a stream less than a foot high. I wonder how many chumps like us fall for this one. Even our addition of Lonely Planet plays along with the joke. There is a house that overlooks the ‘waterfall’. I wonder if the occupants still think the joke is funny (and by implication this would mean we were some of only a few chumps), or whether they are just sick of people stopping outside their house for the benefit of not a lot.

Mary is driving today and she negotiates the road much as she negotiated Cathedral Caves, spilling onto the banks of the roads whenever somebody passes us coming from the opposite way. ‘Mare-ree Mir-phay!,’ I exclaim, ‘stay on the road!’

We need to do some stocking up on supplies and we spot a supermarket off the road as we are passing through a town. ‘Where do I go in?’ asks Mary as she passes the sign saying ‘supermarket entrance this way’.

Further down south is Porpoise Bay, which neighbours Curio Bay. We could spend hours trying to spot porpoise in this bay but, firstly, there are no porpoise in these waters, just dolphins and they only tend to come out to play when it is their breeding season. Also, dolphins don’t like the rain or the gusty winds either, and there is nothing to spot today.

Curio Bay, however, is home to a colony of penguins and some fur seals. As we approach the parking for the bay, we pass a seal lying on the grass by the gravel track. This seems odd, as we can’t even see the sea yet, though we realise that the coast is hidden behind pampas grass when we park. The penguins are stood atop some small cliff platforms that look more like a stage and the birds line up like a choir singing out to the sea; not that penguins are great singers, unless you’ve watched Happy Feet. The ocean swells and clatters against the rocks, spitting up in protest at the barriers to its progress.

Further along more gravel road is Slope Point, the southern-most point of the South Island. There’s not much to see as such, except a sign post and a rusting surveyance mechanism. There is no road or even official parking for Slope Point. We park at the side of the road where we meet some other people who have an Escape camper van, and take the quarter hour walk through grazing land to get to the point. This is where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean are supposed to meet, but it is a cloudy grey day and we don’t see any swell marking the aquatic divide.

Our next stop is Invercargill to buy tonight’s dinner. This has been marked on a personalised map by our absent Kiwi guide as a ‘town of inbreds’. I will say that it looks unspectacular, like a small shipping port, but it does at least have a supermarket.

From here, we decide to take the scenic coastal route on our way towards Milford Sound, another scenic sight we are going to on the insistence of Caz and Mary, even though it is a bit of a diversion as there is no route back away from it other than the way we will have come from. While I have enjoyed these days of scenic experience, I am now feeling that, beautiful as New Zealand, I need some action filled fun rather than just going to see more sights.

Stopping near Tuatapere, we find a hostel and campsite that is linked to the neighbouring motel. There is nobody on reception at the hostel, but just a phone link to the reception at the motel. I pick the phone up and ask how much the camp sites cost. The man at the other end of the line replies that it is $15 per person. I have found that generally it is assumed that one campsite equates to two people, so I ask if it is the same if there are three people in the one camping plot. ‘It’s $15 a person,’ he repeats aggressively, ‘there’s a list of prices right in front of you’. Indeed there was a list of prices right in front of me, about twenty different prices long. ‘Do you want me to check you in?’ he asks. I tell him that I want to check with my friends first. ‘No, I’ll come down and check you in!’ ‘Forget it’, I tell him, and I return to the van to tell the ladies that we are not staying there.

We check a couple of other local campsites, but these are either closed or un-manned with faulty phone links, so we move on. Mary drives on until after seven in the evening when we reach Manapouri, which is by a lake of the same name in the Fiordland (sic) National Park.

It has been raining constantly now for several hours, and we stop at the first campsite we can find here. Fortunately, the one we discover is a unique place where we receive a much friendlier welcome than when we were in Tuatapere. At reception is an elder lady with an American accent, although there was also a British sounding man who I think was her son. There’s certainly a British influence as there is a large collection of Morris Minors in the campsite, as well as the remains of other classic cars like the Hillman Imp. There are cabins in the campsite which are built to look like miniature houses.

Despite us sticking by our policy of the cheapest option which means camping out in the rain, I like this place, and it’s a shame that it is not nearer to anywhere we planned to visit as I would have liked to have stayed longer. There is a friendly atmosphere in the kitchen & lounge area too, so we spend the evening chatting to people until the matriarch of the campsite comes in to tell us the kitchen is closing, having warned us when we checked in that she shut it at half nine. To bed in my damp tent then....