The South

We are reading on the news about the spread of Coronavirus world wide and also in the UK - it is very sad, but we hope you are safe.

Meanwhile we have been travelling south enjoying the best of New Zealand.....






We have had the campervan for 5 days now, and so far so good. It's big and spacious and even has some mod cons like USB sockets! Driving it is easier than we thought it would be, despite its size, mainly because New Zealand roads are quite wide and there's hardly ever any other traffic on them, wonderful. The only hiccup has been Mary's appalling navigating, which has resulted in a few "detours", and her doing the driving when the route is complicated.

Enjoying Kaka Point in the sunshine

The weather has varied from tee-shirts and shorts to hat, gloves & scarf to full wet weather gear, and as we head further south, it will probably be less of the former for the next week at least.

The scenery is as breath-taking as people said it would be, and we have been lucky enough to see some amazing wildlife already. At Oamaru we watched over 100 Little Blue Penguins come ashore at dusk after a day of fishing - cute little things, the smallest of all the penguin species, battling their way through the waves onto shore, then navigating their way through some less than welcoming fur seals (sorry, no photos, we weren't allowed to take any).

On Cannibal Bay on the South Coast we had fantastic sightings of some New Zealand sea lions (big beasts at 150-300kg) - a male and female getting amorous in the sand dunes; then another bigger male arrived to demonstrate that he had mating rights. He chased the smaller male not only away from the female, but all the way down the beach - and we had front row seats to all of this, with no other people on the beach for most of it.

Three's a crowd

Walking up the beach after a night's fishing

YEP in near darkness - 400mm 1/500s, F5.6, ISO16000!

Last evening at Curio Bay we watched as a Yellow Eyed Penguin, the rarest of the species, came ashore after a day's fishing, and stood there preening himself to get air back into his feathers. 


We have also visited some lakes, waterfalls and forests - everywhere is free and wonderfully uncrowded.

Hector's Dolphin Surfing

And this morning we watched some Hector's Dolphins (the smallest and rarest of this species - there seems to be a theme developing) play in the waves at Curio Bay.








Tomorrow we take the ferry to Stewart Island to spend the night there (in a back-packers lodge!!!) to hopefully catch sighting of the elusive Kiwi.

Hope the content is about right, please drop us a line with any comments and check in next time to see how we cope with the dreaded sandflies.....