Curio Bay & Invercargill

Today we left Dunedin and headed down through Curio Bay along the Southern coast of New Zealand to take in the costal scenery and do a spot of wildlife watching, namely seals and penguins. We weren't to be disapointed, our first stop was to look for Elephant seals which weigh in at a massive 600kg but unfortunately our luck wasn't in and had to settle for regular fur seals, bummer hey, we watched them from a far which I thought was still pretty cool.

Next we headed further along the coast for a walk in Cannibal Bay to spot some more seals, obviously we were expecting to see them from a distance little did I know that they would be literally sat on the beach, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a huge adult male seal chilling out lying in the middle of the beach. Needless to say we didn't get too close to him but close enough to smell him and he stank of rotten fish, nice!. As we left the beach we spotted a much smaller female relaxing by the rocks with her head on a patch of grass, very cute, I approached for a photo and she kept lifting her head to keep an eye on me.

As we headed closer to Invercargill we stopped again this time for a bit of penguin spotting at the petrified forest, 180 million years old, it is revealed at low tide at Curio Bay, in a spectacular area known as The Catlins. This Jurassic forest, of petrified tree stumps and logs, is most impressive you can really see how this rock was once made of wood.

Invercargill is the southernmost and westernmost city in New Zealand, and one of the southernmost settlements in the world but I wasn't that impressed on arrival, although the heavy rain might have had something to do with that. There were lots of bikers in town this day as there was an event on celebrating Burt Munro made famous more recently by the movie 'The Worlds Fastest Indian' starring Anthony Hopkins.