Southern Tip

1/22 Wednesday

We start with a big breakfast and drive south to take a route known as the
Catlins.  It winds around the southern tip of the South Island and is as far
South as we will go on our trip.  There are many viewing spots and we stop
several times along the route.  Some of the road is not paved and we drive along
gravel for many kilometers at a time.  We see cascading waterfalls and huge
bays, which have beautiful sand beaches.  One bay has resident dolphins.  They
are Hector dolphins and are one of the smallest dolphins in the world.  We can
see them frolicking in the middle of the bay, way out of range to get close.  We
also trekked to “Nuggets” point where one of the oldest lighthouses built in
1869 still shines light off the point for passing ships to see.  The view was
stunning.  One side off the point was totally calm and the other was very windy. 
I spotted a dolphin from the top and it was easy to pick it out through the
beautiful aqua waters. 
   
    We then continued north to the city of Dunedin.  The city used to be the
largest in the country, is steeped in history and has some older churches that
stand out when we drove through it looking for the hotel.  The city is not laid
out as well as we’ve seen in other cities and it took us a while to find our
hotel “The Skyline Leisure Lodge”.  We had dinner (pizza) down the street at
“Filadelphios”, pronounced like “Philadelphia” and the restaurant had American
flags and a picture of Lady Liberty painted on the wall.  It’s as close to home
as we have seen since we arrived and the pizza was also very good.  We retire to
our room for the night.

1/23 Thursday
   
    We start with breakfast at the hotel and then we begin our last trek in our
rent-a-car.  A 3 ½ hour drive to Queenstown.   Before leaving Dunedin we wanted
to make an effort to see some penguins, which we heard you could get quite close
to.  We followed the map to the area, again finding Dunedin one of the more
difficult cities to negotiate.  This trek gives us two options to get to a
peninsula where the penguins will be.  One is the high scenic drive while the
low road runs along the coast.  Since we cannot find the high road (not
surprising) we take the low road, which is enjoyable, and if it were any closer
to the water we would have been swimming in it.  It is very windy and there is
not a guardrail on any corner.  We come to the end of the road and it is cold
and windy.  There is a large center, which focuses on the Albatross colony,
which sits on the opposite side of the hill.  Our timing to see the penguins is
not “spot-on” and we decide to check out the albatross colony but it is a paid
for guided service and we’re not well timed on that one either.  We take in the
flying giants from a distance and then decide to head back and begin our trek to
Queenstown.  It turned out we found the high road for the drive back and took in
the scenic views we missed on the way out.