Our first stop was Curio Bay which was in the news last week as a surfer was attacked by a Great White Shark here. He survived but his board had some large teeth marks in it. Our reason for visiting Curio Bay was to see the petrified forest and yellow-eyed penguins. The petrified forest did not look much like a forest (see photo below) but we did see one penguin at a distance.
Next stop was Slope Point, the southern most point of the South Island. We can say that we stood on this southern point, but we did not stand on it for very long, as although it is roughly halfway between the equator and the South Pole it definitely felt much closer to the South Pole today.
To warm up we stopped at the Niagara Falls Cafe and it was definitely the highlight of the morning. It was in the middle of nowhere and did not look like much from the road, but it had great coffee and tea, tasty slices and the meals looked wonderful. I definitely recommend it.
We ate our picnic lunch in the parking lot at Purakaunui Falls and then did the short bush walk to view the falls. After all the rain the river was running a little dirty.
The day was still young so we visited Cannibal Bay and then walked over the headland to Surat Bay. These bays are home to the New Zealand (Hooker) Sea Lions and we saw many sea lions on the beach. The highlight was watching a large sea lion trying to prevent a younger sea lion / seal from getting to the ocean, and chasing it on the beach. We had the adrenaline pumping as we tried to stay out of their way.
Buoyed by our sea lion experience we decided to return to Nugget Point and try and see some more penguins, but despite spending an hour in the hide, we only saw one penguin, and again it was at a distance.
Our warm dry motel was very welcome at the end of the day.
Tomorrow we head to Invercargill.
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