This was our home away from home for three nights, The Whistling Frog Cafe in the heart of the Catlins. Our cabin that we thought would be a shoe box turned out to be plenty big enough.
Right on the doorstep of the Whistling Frog is McLean Falls.The trail to the falls meanders through dense rainforest. The first thing we noticed about The Catlins was the lush green. Believe it or not, the water falls below is not McLean Falls, rather a smaller waterfall downstream.
This is McLean Falls. Magnificent!
This is my artistic shot. It took a bit of scrabbling/climbing up slippery rock faces to get to the one I wanted.
Having checked the tide times we packed lunch and essentially drove
across the road to the Cathedral Caves. We ate our lunches on the beach with
this setting (below).
Cathedral Caves is only accessible at low tide. The waves crashing into the caves on a high tide have created the cave over time.
Once you get to the back of the cave it can be very dark. You have to watch your feet with random rocks littering the cave floor to kick your toes on.
We picked up Pat back the the Frog and set off toward Invercargill. We were looking for wildlife for the most part. Curio Bay is supposedly frequented by dolphins but rudely they weren't there, nor at Porpoise Bay (should have know with a name like that). Curio Bay has a touch of the Cliffs of Moher (Ireland) about it (including the weather).
We got going again to the most Southern point on the South Island, Slope Point.
The South coast is a harsh place as you can see from the wind blown trees. It was windy and cold when we were there in the middle of summer so I can only imagine what it's like in winter.
We didn't hang around Slope Point too long and opted to go back to Curio Bay to watch the Yellow Eyed Penguins return to the beach during the late afternoon.
There are only a few thousand of these the rarest of all penguins. There are only eight pairs living in the bay so we were pretty lucky to see four individuals.
What a day! We were pretty excited to find out what tomorrow would bring.
