12/27/2016 - Catlin's adventures

Day of week: Tuesday

Cities visited: No cities, various stops around the Catlins

Lodging: Lazy Dolphin Lodge at Curio Bay in the Catlins

Brace yourselves: this was a long day so there are lots of pictures! 

On Tuesday we woke in Lazy Dolphin lodge, our Catlins accommodation for two nights. The Lazy Dolphin was right next to the beach and had a couple of different kitchens for us to cook food, along with lots of guests. One woman we met was finishing a three year assignment in NZ with the US Foreign Service, and was about to rotate a 2 year assignment in Hawaii. Emma and I are considering the foreign service as a career option after hearing about her assignment locations!

Today we visited the Thickthorne Farm. On the way there we drove past more sheep and saw hills of grasses waving in the wind.

Sheep and more sheep

Waving grasses 

We went to look at llama and sheep wool, and ended up getting a private walking tour of the llama areas, which was awesome. Baby and mama llamas walked up to us, Emma petted one a bit, and the owner told us all about working with them. Such an unexpected pleasure to get to do this. We asked her how much of the surrounding land was hers, and she looked around and said "as far as the eye can see". Pretty cool moment and a reflection of the size of some of these farms.

"Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know."
-Carl Spackler

Cute baby llama still learning to gambol

We had a long-ish drive to our next stop and took a short break at a windy overlook of a small bay.

Zach braves the wind for a moment
(mostly we took shelter behind the car)

Overlook

Nice sense of the wind

We took a quick lunch before hiking, opting for backpack food to create the awesome rice cake/peanut butter/banana sandwich! Pic's peanut butter was great, highly recommend it and you can get it in the US.

Emma showing off lunch ingredients

We used our new hiking gear to hike into two different waterfalls: McLean Falls and Purakaunui Falls. We learned that south NZ is a land of local weather, with pouring rain turning into sun turning into drizzle every other minute. Both hikes were relatively short hikes to the water, and both were very beautiful once we got there. The hiking clothes worked great on their maiden voyage. A decent number of fellow tourists were at each one, but not so many that it felt crowded. We did have someone ask us if we brought the rainy weather with us from Seattle.

At McCleans Falls, Emma relaxed on a big flat rock watching the main falls while Zach climbed some rocks to get to the top of the falls.

Water rushes towards the Mclean Falls waterfall...

...reflecting the greenery...

...then crashes down to the pool below

Smaller waterfalls on the way to the main Purakaunui Falls

Zach and Emma at Purakaunui Falls

Purakaunui Falls without us distracting you

Purakaunui Falls in slow motion

Our first very "touristy" stop was to the Lost Gypsy Gallery, a quirky tourist attraction that was suggested by multiple people. The place was crawling with tourists but entertaining nonetheless. In the picture below Zach mounted a bike with a TV screen in front of it. Above the screen a sign reads, "The best thing on TV" and when you pedal the screen shows a scratchy black and white live feed of you.

Zach biking on a typical Lost Gypsy piece of equipment

Our last event of the day was visiting Slope Point, the southernmost point of the South Island, and the closest we may ever get on land to the South Pole. The walk to the landmark is entirely in a sheep field. The sheep were mostly scared of us, but we spent the whole walk sidestepping dung. It turns out we went on a very windy day even for NZ, and there were a few moments of actual fear as we walked along the cliff towards the landmark. Once we were there, we took shelter next to a small weather station setup and took a photo or two, afraid to venture away for too long in case the winds snatched our phones or knocked us over. The sheep didn't seem to mind the wind however. Bahhh. Just outside the entrance to Slope Point we saw the effects of consistently strong winds on plant life, in a group of trees that were actually growing sideways.

Sign at the end of Slope Point. This, about 30 feet from the
cliff edge, was as close as we dared go in the high winds!

Trees growing sideways near Slope Point

Its really important to us that you see how windy NZ was :).
Sorry about the thumb in the video!


Maybe this will give you a sense of SHEEP

Tuesday night we also had our first meal we cooked ourselves. We had picked up some ramen from the Queenstown grocery store, added carrots/mushrooms/garlic and paired it with some salad. The garlic and salad we picked up from Curio Bay Organics, which is a fancy name for a small stand set up outside of someone's home that they stock with veggies and that you take and pay for on the honor system. The lady who runs it saw our car and came outside, and explained she picked the lettuce the previous day -- it really tasted fresh. Meal success!

Zach bravely foraging for food for the family

Delicious salty ramen plus salad with some
of the freshest lettuce we've ever eaten