Curio Bay to Purakaunui Beach

It is another busy site seeing day as we enter the Catlins park. The first stop is the Cathedral Caves. We had to leave early because we needed to make it there at low tide. The caves were pretty cool because they were big enough to walk through. You could walk in one entrance and out the other.











We then went to the Lost Gypsy Gallery which is a bus filled with all sorts of little trinkets. They were fun to play with to see what they did. There were musical gurgling sea shells and old electronics rewired to make little games and jokes.



We then went to the Tahakopa Beach to enjoy the sun. Once we were there we laid out until John could take the wind and sand no more. He thinks if they stayed any longer they would have been buried by sand.



We continued along the way to Jack’s Blow Hole. Visually (especially in the picture) its not too impressive. The impressive part is that you are over 200 meters inland on a cliff side and the hole is filled with seawater through underground channel that brings in ocean water.



We then headed out to Papatowai Falls. This was another gorgeous waterfall here. It was a little different than the falls in the Fiordlands and was neat to see. Check it out:



We finished the day off by heading to Papatowai Beach to camp for the night. We went for a nice beach walk



We then had to cross a little stream to make it to the cliff side. While crossing the stream Maya slipped in and got her sweats all wet. She nearly cried:



We continued the nice walk when we ran into a very grumpy sea lion. He looked like a rock until we got to close and he jumped up. He nearly started chasing us away.



Along the way to the cliffs we ran into a fellow camper who raised our spirits by informing us of a yellow eyed penguin colony at the cliffs. We continued the rest of the way to check them out.





When trying to get closer we were surprised again by another sea lion right behind a rock 15 feet in front of us. Although he was not as grumpy as the previous one we stayed back until he went to the sea.



Once he was gone we got closer for better pictures.



By this time the news had spread and other campers were on their way out. We saw them getting chased by the grumpy sea lion and we had a good chuckle.



The next thing we know, we look behind us and see the viewing crowed that had formed. So we decided to leave and let them get their pictures.



We headed back to the campsite and made one last discovery for the day. Marian found something fluffy in the sand. After we uncovered a little bit of it we figured out it was a dead penguin.



After all this excitement we turned in for the day.