Spring Break: Part II: The Catlins!

If someone asked me to go to one place during their stay in New Zealand, I would probably The Catlins. Comprised of the south-east coast of the southern island of New Zealand, The Catlins have beautiful coastlines, temperate rain forests, and rolling farmlands. Every 10km you say, "hey, were in Ireland!" and then another 10km, "Were in South America?" and then "Hey we made it to the Caribbean!".

After we left Dunedin we headed south to the Southern Scenic Route, which took us along the coast all the way to Invercargill. We actually stayed on this route through the Fiordlands, but ill get to that soon.

Our first stop was Nugget Point, we passed the sign, and in a "spur of the moment sure whatever" we turned around. Luckily we did, It was my favorite spot in the Catlins!
On the way Sophie spotted these Sea Lions, and we got as close as we were comfortable with, about 5 meter. These guys are huge, and we didn't want to disturb, plus you never get this close to one of these unless your behind a pane of glass at the zoo!


Nugget Point is a lighthouse lookout, and it's a good thing they put one there, check out these rocks!


The water was so blue, it felt like a scene out of the pirates of the carribean, this didn't look real.





We decided to have lunch on the side of the road, where a nice outdoor dining set was made out of some old wire spools








We kept driving on, checked out a nice waterfall on a
short where I snapped this cool photo:

At this point we were driving through a temperate rain forest, looking down at long, green, rolling hills. I don't really know what to say to be honest, the pictures tell the story for themselves



Because we were driving through some back roads, Sophie (who couldn't drive here otherwise because she didn't have her license) gave me a rest from driving which allowed me to view some of the scenery. I snapped a video of us touring the country. Cool countryside, a typical driving conversation we would have.



Come sunset, we arrived on a beautiful lookout, and decided to snap some cool photos:



Here we met a french traveler, around our age who had traveled from France to here through turkey, the middle east, Russia, the Himalayas and everything between! He had traveled mainly by foot, carrying about 60-80 pounds on his back, or various means of travel, such as horseback over the Himalayas. New Zealand was his last destination before he returned home in 2 weeks. He said he was tired, just wanted to go home. I can't blame the kid, most of his travels (which i think was around 8 months, maybe 12) was while he was alone. Well, he put us to shame. We were living in style in this cramped van/bed/kitchen! haha.

After the sun set we proceeded to slope point, the southern most tip of the southern island. Unless you go to the Stewart island south of Invercargill, this is as close as your gonna get to Antarctica. We slept here on the side of the road and crossed over a sheep pasture to get to the coast. A pretty cool feeling to be this far south of the world.


This sums up our trip to the Catlins. Yes, we only spent one day in my favorite place in New Zealand. You could easily spend a couple weeks here, and you couldnt take in all of the wide range of beauty offered here. Well, theres still the summer!