The Catlins

February 8

I'm going to forbid Ian from even setting his watch alarm from now on. It has never woken us up. But somehow my iPhone alarm didn't either. I need to figure that out. We only overslept by about 20 minutes and still made it on the road before 7:00. We stopped in Invercargill for breakfast. The town's image is as funny as its name. Wes said it looked like Cheyenne, Wyoming with its brick buildings and general US western feel. We found a European restaurant for breakfast (though Siena questions its authenticity given that we received more than toast and milk for breakfast).

We're doing touring the Catlins today, largely following the eponymous Heritage Trail along the southern coast of the island. Our first stop was at a lighthouse. I would look up its name (I really don't remember it at all), but the lighthouse itself was probably the most irrelevant part of the stop. It was fenced off in a way that made it look like a decrepit prison and we just stayed away from it. The first thing I did take notice of was the toilet. I can tell you without a doubt this was the most luxurious non-flush toilet I've ever used. It's inside a wooden building and the room is huge; it has to run half the length of the whole building. The wood finish is beautiful. It even has a skylight built into the ceiling. There is absolutely no smell in the room, though that may be due to the shear size of the place, and the toilet, you can hear, is a remarkably long way above the waste bin below. After you're done, you can use the little sink conveniently placed in the room. Given that this sink and the toilet comprise the only things in the room, the excessive floor dimensions are really unnecessary. Moreover, I would have gladly traded the room, the skylight, and the wood paneling for hot water in the sink, or at least some soap. But as non-flush toilets go, I really can't complain.

The stop got better from there! Wes and I witnessed a moonwalking seagull in one of the tide pools. I can't explain what caused it to spastically kick its legs like that, but its flourishes and its backward movement forced us to conclude that it was making a Michael Jackson tribute. Ian joined us shortly afterward (by way of ninja-crawl through the grass), and we were all motioned over to the other side of the beach by Zach. He had found a seal! Or a sea lion! We really weren't sure which, but it was impressive either way. We stayed back the 10-20 meters that were supposed to be a safe perimeter and made sure not to get between it and the ocean (the signs have trained us well). The poor creature was really just trying to catch some z's on the sunny beach, but it kept being attacked by bugs. Its defense against this assault was to throw sand on itself, but none of it seemed to reach high enough on its back, where the bugs were paying particular attention to some exposed flesh through a gash in its fur. As big as it was, it seemed cute and garnered a lot of sympathy from us for its bug woes.

The next stop on the trail was a big one: the southernmost point of the south island! 

This was the farthest south any of us had been in our lives, and will likely be the farthest south any of us ever go. It was tantalizing to see a rocky ledge below us jutting further south into the sea, but there was really no way of getting down there. Instead, Ian and I continued an earlier rock-throwing competition to see who could, for now and forever, get a stone to a lower longitude than the other.

I think I won.

Reluctantly journeying north for the first time on our trip, we next made our way to a fossilized forest. Though it wasn't much to see at a distance, the rocky ground revealed, up close, the clearly distinguishable stone casts of long-dead trees. It was a unique experience to tap on something that looks for all the world like would and feel nothing but cold, hard, rock. We did our best to find the penguins that the conservation signs so gravely warned us to keep our distance from (if you get too close to the babies, they will jump in the sea too early and die. If you get too close to the mother, it will jump back in the sea with the babies' food and they will die), but there wasn't a single one to be seen.

Nor did we have any luck with dolphins at Porpoise Bay, where we stopped for lunch (ham, cheese, and mayo. And some crackers. And some German cookies). What we did see there was a deranged seagull. The gulls here, perhaps used to being fed by people, liked to cluster in a large group near where we were eating. Mostly they stood still, looking around with an apparent expression of indifference. One of them, though, was insane. It would lower its head to the ground, open its mouth as wide as possible, and screech at any neighboring bird. Unsatisfied with the effect this had on its nonchalant fellows, the bird would then proceed to chase one of them, on foot, screeching the whole time. The harassed victim would scurry away. If Psycho was satisfied, it would start again on a fresh target. If not, it would jump at the fleeing bird, completely miss, and carry on screeching at whatever bird it landed by, as if that was the one it meant to chase the whole time. Eventually Ian got tired of the lot of them and ran around in a circle, chasing them all away.

 Sandwiches finished in peace, we decided to skip the next stop or two in favor of sea caves. I promptly fell asleep on entering the car and woke up hazily in the sea cave carpark. I slowly pieced together that entrance to the caves cost $5. Ian was strongly opposed to this (though he confessed later that this was largely brought on by the grumpiness of awaking from his own nap), but was dragged out of the car anyway. We coughed up the money at the gate, waited for the talkative group of kids in front of us to get a head start, and headed down the trail. A short walk through a forest took us to the beach. This was unlike any beach I can remember walking on, not because I was accidentally mooned by the group we apparently did not give a sufficient head start to, but because the sand was squeaky. Every step we took – Ian and I in shoes, Zach and Wes barefoot – our feet made the kind of squeak you hear when basketball players slide ever so slightly on a well-polished court. Whatever caused this strange phenomenon ended before we reached the caves, which was probably for the best. It would have distracted us from the fun.

The first thing we realized in the first cave we entered was that, stupidly, we had brought absolutely no torches (“flashlight” = “torch”), even though all four of us own a perfectly good headlamp. In true democratic spirit, Wes, Ian, and I unite in blaming Zach, who, as the driver, was the only one not groggy from sleep when we reached the carpark, and therefore the one who should have been thinking clearly enough to realize that we need lights in a cave. The second thing we realize is that the lump in the passageway between this cave and the adjacent one is a seal. Or a sea lion. The narrowish passageway is definitely within the edge of the safe perimeter. We'll have to go back outside and around to the other cave. Inside that one, back in sight of the seal, we start to notice our lack of light. Zach and I are inching our way into a small side path when the seal BARKS! and starts lunging at some tourists back in the first cave.

Glad it's not us.

The seal quickly slows down and the people slowly retreat. Zach and I take a brief look into the side path once more when Ian shouts “It's coming back!” I do a mock scream and start walking back to a safe distance from the seal's original position. The seal is now hopping toward that position – which is the same as hopping toward us – and I see Ian bolt past me, Zach hot on his heels. I find this pretty funny. The seal settles back down for sleep and I tell the runners that they had probably done nothing other than make the seal more likely to charge us. We briefly debate whether it's likely that seals can outrun humans. When we get to a point where the rock wall is far enough out into the beach that the waves are reaching it, we are unsure whether to continue. Are there caves around the corner? A guy returning from that direction assures us that there are.

Ian and I pick our way through the tide and over the rocks more carefully than Zach and Wes, since we don't want to get our shoes wet. We safely reach the other side and, after a little more walking than I expected, found the next cave. We ventured bravely in. This cave was quite dark, and my meager iPhone light – the strongest light we had – did next to nothing to light the walls. I eventually stopped (I was the leader of the group), too cowardly to go forward without more light. Zach goaded me on, and I told him I would do it only if I could use him as a human shield. He didn't agree, but I liked the idea enough to try it out. I hid behind him, holding my phone out over his right shoulder and my head over his left. We made very slow progress since I was essentially pushing him forward, but there was a lot of laughter and a lot of confusion from Ian and Wes, who could not see far enough forward to tell what we were doing. We gave up and turned around.

At the mouth of the cave, we ran into a brilliant fellow (he brought a headlamp!), who asked us whether this one went back very far. We told him we really didn't know, but that he would probably have more success given that he'd thought to bring a light. He told us the next cave over was pretty narrow and that he'd turned around when he saw a pair of eyes looking back at him.

Great.

And so, of course, we headed off to that very cave, with far less light than our informant. I again reached a point where I did not want to go further, though this time not because of general darkness.

“There's an indeterminate thing in front of us”, I informed the group when they caught up. We decided to take a picture with Ian's camera, knowing that the flash would give us a lot of light. Hopefully we could make out the path ahead by looking at the picture on his small screen. FLASH! It was an... indeterminate thing. 

A few more of the same, one with me pointlessly doing the human shield thing with Ian (who was in front anyway), and no good. We were too far away. I decided to brave the darkness and walk closer to take the next picture myself. And so I walked slowly toward the spot where I knew something white was sitting.

“Take the picture already!” Ian shouted in suspense. FLASH!

“Guys, it's... gone”.

“No f'n way!” We hadn't really thought we were getting close to something live. But I showed them the picture Ian had just taken: thing. I showed them the picture I took: nothing. Immediately we began to waddle down the tiny corridor in hilariously befuddled panic. Part fear, part confusion, part silliness, the causes of the ensuing laughter were myriad and powerful. I was laughing harder than I have in a very long time by the time we reached the brightly-lit entrance to the cave.

After calming down, we decided to go back for a second try. Zach wasn't convinced there had ever really been anything there, but this time I could see it from the time we started. I kept my eyes focused on it all the way until we reentered the darkness. Ian tried a few more shots, but failed to capture it on any of them. I got one picture and handed the camera back to Ian as we inched ever closer. I was staring hard at the patch of white when I saw it twist. It appeared to be fur and there were definitely eyes. We had in fact been looking at a live creature, though we didn't know what. Satisfied, we turned around. Later, viewing these pictures on a computer would inform us that we had run away in blind terror from a cute baby penguin. The only penguin, in fact, that we have seen on this whole trip. And we've been looking.

We didn't go to many caves after that. At least, nothing about them stood out. The last one we went to was behind a pool of water about 15 cm deep. This was more than Ian and I wanted to wade in our shoes, so I made a traversal across the rock wall to the other side. Ian didn't want to do that either, so he sat out our last visit. This was just as well, since none of the caves (there turned out to be three) were very large, but were dark enough that we didn't enter any of them.

Our last stop on the Catlins tour was a very pretty waterfall. It was a wide one, and fell down in several steps. A pretty serious photographer was taking pictures of it the whole time we were there, so we tried to keep out of the center when we went off the path to see it closer.

 We were pretty serious too

Dinner tonight was mutton chops and cous cous at a holiday park on Lake Waihola (we didn't quite make it to Dunedin). We eat out on a point of land in the lake, with a floating dock a little way out. I'm reminded of my childhood in New Tribes. When Zach and Ian are too full to finish their cous cous, I remind myself of my dad by finishing it for them.

Tomorrow we explore Dunedin.