Kiwi Experience: Seals, Sea Lions and Spectacular Scenery

7th - 8th June 2014

Back onto the bus then with some new people and a new driver, Roger. We left Dunedin and headed south to the Catlins and our first stop was Nugget Point, one of New Zealand's more iconic sights.

Nugget Point

There were a lot of seals along the rocky coastline as well as on the 'nuggets' which is quite impressive as they are quite steep. We spent about half an hour here walking along the coastline and watching the seals.

Nice

We went further down the coast to look at the sea lions. I thought seals was an abreviation of sea lions but they are actually different animals. Sea lions have longer front flippers and move around on the back flippers whereas seals move around on their bellies.

I was surpised by the size of these animals. They were bigger than a person and weighing a hell of a lot more, they could easily knock you off your feet if you get too close like some of the more stupid people on my bus were doing. This family of sea lions seemed quite happy chilling on the beach. They weren't bothered by us at all. Well at least until a couple of french girls basically chased them into the sea.

After lunch in a cafe we visted a couple of waterfalls the second of which were quite impressive. It had been raining the night before so there was quite a lot of water coming over the falls.

I should have at least waved!

The last stop of the day was at a petrified forest. On a Tuesday for a few thousand years ago there was a forest here that got fried and all the trees turned to stone which I didn't even know was possible but there you go. You can still see the lines of the tree truncks in the rocks.

Stone trees

Stone tree

This place is also home to the yellow eyed penguin, the rarest penguin in the world. We saw one straight away looking for his mates who had gone fishing - im guessing. We arrived just as the sun was setting which is the best time to see penguins coming back from a days fishing. When I was in Melbourne we had to wait till twilight but the driver wanted to leave about 10 minuites after sunset so we missed the best time really which was a bit annoying. Just as we reached the bus we saw another one crossing the rocks from the sea to the bush.

One of the worlds rareest penguin

Dramatic sky

We spent the night in Invacargill which has been described as the 'arsehole of New Zealand'. It didn't seem all that bad but we were only there for 12 hours. We went to the bar next door to watch the All Blacks narowlly beat England and then when to bed.

Mirror Lakes

The next day was our trip into the Milford Sound, something which I have been looking forward to for a long time. It was a really foggy start to the day and it wasn't any better when we met up with the main Kiwi bus which Mangee was driving. As we got closer to the mountains, however, the fog started to break up. It gave this very dramatic picture of the mountains from Mirror Lake. If you look in the picture you can see they put the sign upside down so that you can read the reflection.

Huge!

Around every corner the mountains just got bigger and bigger until we found ourselves in a steep valley which a large mountain in front of us that they had blasted a tunnel through. We stopped off at a creek which had worn away the rock to make it look like a water slide through a deep canyon.

Shame about the bus

Long way down

We arrived in Milford Sound and jumped on a boat to go on our tour around the mountains. The Milford Sound is not actually a sound its a fiord, the difference being that a sound is carved out by a river and a fiord is by a glacier.

Milford Sound

Fiord or Sound it doesn't really matter, the place is stunning. We were really lucky with the weather. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the low winter sun made the mountains look very dramatic. Its one of those places that no amount of pictures or video can really capture the immenseness of this valley

Awesome

Super Awesome

Super super awesome

On the way out to sea we went up to a cliff face where was a waterfall and stuck the front nose of the boat in it so that people on the front viewing deck would get wet. Its supposed to make you look ten years younger. There was a larger waterfall on the other side that we would visit on the way back and you can see the size of it compared to the boat thats infront of it.

Steep

Rainbow in the waterfall

Big waterfall

From the sea

Super awesomeness of awesome super

We went out to sea turned around and came back. It was such a good trip and I was so glad it had been sunny for it given that the west coast is a very wet place! We jumped back on the bus and made the long trip back to Queenstown where I had a very exciting week ahead of me!