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....

near Purakaunui Bay

Cathedral Caves

Penguins at Shag Point

taking life on the road up market

some of the campsite car collection

Day 241 – 30 March 2010: Mouraki Boulders, state subsidised Burlesque, Shag Point and New Zealand’s only castle

First thing in the morning we visit the ‘Mouraki Boulders’ which are like giant cracked marbles on Koekohe Beach which could be part of the Cornish coast. According to Maori legend these are remains of eel baskets, calabash (a ‘long melon’ grown not as food but to use as containers) and sweet potatoes washed up from a wreck of an ‘Arai-te-uru’, the large sailing canoes that brought the Ngai Tahu tribe (the original South Island Maoris) to New Zealand. However, according to geological legend, they were formed by mud sediments, but I think the legend is much easier to comprehend. There is a $2 fee to go onto the beach, and another $2 to buy deer feed who are in a field next to the car park. They gobble and slobber all over my hands, but there is a bathroom in the info centre.

After the boulders, we stop at Shag Point, an old coastal mining centre that now attracts tourists with its seal colony. The coal was extracted from a mine below sea level, which was active from 1863 up until the 1970s. There are remains of a rail line down to the sea line that was used to collect the coal. Walking past the old rail shed onto the rocks of the shore, I am startled when the washed up seaweed on the dry rocks lets out a grunt. It is then I realise that I am within ten feet of a resting seal that was equally startled by my presence, his brown grey fur easily camouflaging him amongst the dark maroon of the seaweed.

There are quite a few male, female and pup seals scattered around the rocks on the opposite side of the natural harbour. The largest male was feeling frisky, but the ladies kept their distance every time he gave chase, leaving him barking in frustration.

There is also supposed to be another penguin colony on Shag Point, but apparently not in the early afternoon.

We go to Dunedin for lunch, another Victorian-esque town which is twinned with Edinburgh in Scotland, Dunedin being the original name for Edinburgh in Scottish legend and early literature. This latter fact earns the right of Robert Burns to be commemorated here with a statue.

One of the older looking buildings in the town centre is the state subsidised theatre, which from the outside looks much like a traditional, small but elegant hotel. This week it is featuring a Burlesque show.

For lunch I stop at a pub near the theatre to have a duck risotto and a cider, costing me NZ $24 in all, so I am pushing the boat out already....

Leaving Dunedin, we move out onto Otagu Peninsula to visit Lanarch Castle, a mansion which was built by William Lanarch, a merchant / politician and completed in 1887. It does not possess a hugely imposing edifice and looks more like a posh country hotel. I am not sure what qualifies something to be called a castle. Maybe it is the presence of jagged topped walls on a tower for archers and cannons to fire from, but this tower was never going to see battle. However, Mr Lanarch was apparently visited by demons and he committed suicide in the Parliament buildings in 1898. The castle eventually fell into dis-repair but was restored by the current owners who bought it in 1967, though remnants of old horse carts and rusted farm machinery are still scattered around the grounds. It is now a tourist attraction and possesses a ballroom for hire. Caz, Mary and I avoid paying to go inside, but we spend a half hour or so walking around the gardens. For me the best thing about the place was the views it offers over the landscape from its elevated situation. I discovered an unmanicured part of the grounds, which I don’t think was meant for visitors and which was littered with large stone pots and plant boxes that were in the process of being restored and decorated with surface etchings. Not being a keen gardener, this was the favourite part of my visit.

I am attempting to go without cigarettes today. This attempt lasts until I throw a wobbly at Caz, who is driving today, for not following my directions to Owaka, so we stop at the next petrol station for fags and directions.

On the roads, we pass several farms with deer, ostrich and, of course, sheep. In one field we pass two ostrich who try to run away as our van passes. Either they were especially scared by the wild portrait of Gandalf on that side of the van, or they must spend all day running up and down their field fleeing from passing traffic.

Leaving the main road, the track to Purakaunui Bay, our next camping spot, is another gravel road, of which there are rather a lot in New Zealand. There can’t be more than a hundred vehicles a day which use this track.

Besides farming, the lightly populated South Island is very much geared toward tourism. Most vehicles we pass on the roads seem to be some sort of camper van and campsites, motels and hostels are numerous. There are even car auctions targeting backpackers, as it can be cheaper to buy and sell a vehicle rather than rent one, though of course there is more inherent risk. New Zealanders are a very relaxed and unpretentious people, like their Aussie cousins, though happily rules and regulations don’t seem to be high on Kiwi priorities. All this said, not all the locals are entirely welcoming. Passing through a town today, one boy of about twelve stood and looked at us as we passed. We waved to him, to which he responded by flipping us the bird.

Purakaunui Bay, just south of Cannibal Bay, is another beautiful place to camp. The campsite overlooks a beach enclosed by a cliff and rich vegetation. There is a seal resting on the beach. We can’t get onto the main part of the beach without getting wet, as a stream comes out of the valley and connects to the sea tide. Only truck tracks disturb the sand, using the beach as a boat launch. It seems odd to see this seal on its own on this large expanse of beach though.

Despite being near the most southerly point of New Zealand, the weather is still quite mild, though of course we are at low altitude.

views from Lanarch Castle grounds

hidden grounds of Lanarch Castle

Camping @ Purakaunui Bay

Day 240 – 29 March 2010: Icebergs and Penguins

I kept waking up on the hard ground so didn’t get a good night’s sleep in preparation for our early walk up the valley. However, the three hour Hooker Lake Walk reinvigorates me quickly with its glacial waterfalls, bobbling rivers and streams. The scenery again is awesome. Hooker Lake is at the foot of Mt Cook and at its’ centre floats a mini iceberg.

After the walk and a quick lunch, we go back on ourselves past Lake Pukaki again. I am driving and I annoy Sister Mary by abruptly stopping to photograph the scenery. ‘It’s a fekkin big blue lake!,’ she complains.

Journeying south westerly, we stop at Twizel, which isn’t an impolite suggestion, but a town name that means ‘town of trees’. It doesn’t have any trees though, and is instead an anonymous looking suburb. A suburb of where, I am not sure, and we do not stay long enough to find out.

We go on to Oamaru, a Victorian looking town on the east coast, where there is also a penguin colony in the harbour. And a seal. The penguins occupy the old harbour dockings while the seal sits lazily at the gate of the docks. There is a small information centre here which offers tours to see ‘breeding adults’. I don’t know if this means we would paying for the privilege to see penguins in the act, but it is one we pass up as we are told that, despite there being hundreds on the docks, there are only three in the nesting area to see at the moment. Hold on, aren’t penguins supposed to be monogamous? Apparently more come out to, um, breed at night, maybe so the kids don’t see.

We drive further south to ‘Glencove Scenic Campsite’. It is set in a very peaceful woodland, but we have been spoiled by the settings of our campsites so far, and this one seems dull in comparison. Around the corner from here is ‘Camp Iona’, which is crowded with kids bouncing on trampolines and playing various ball games. This is owned by the Presbyterian Church. In our cynical way, we suspect we have found a little hidden militia camp of the type that feature on Louis Theroux programmes, but the children stay up making noise past our own bed time, so they seem to enjoy it.