Paul and Cindy, New Zealand 2015: Manapouri, Invercargill, Stewart Island and the Catlins

After returning from Doubtful Sound, we stayed at the Freestone BBH Backpackers just outside of the town of Manapouri. It was a different and rustic place to stay, as each room is its own building, with a kitchen, living area, and bed - like bungalows, but set in the hillside bush overlooking Lake Manapouri and the mountains. Nice place to stay!

Tui Lodge, our room at Freestone Backpackers

View from Freestone

We then wound our way south with a few stops along the way. Paul got to explore at Clifden Caves, and we visited Yesteryears Museum/Cafe and the interesting Cwtch gallery (with psychology-inspired art) in the small Southland town of Tuatapere. After reconnecting with the coast and the windswept trees of Southland, we drove on to Invercargill where we stayed overnight. Invercargill was larger and had more to see than we remembered from a brief stop four years ago – we enjoyed seeing Henry the tuatara lizard at the Invercargill Museum, and also saw the World’s Fastest Indian motorcycle (raced by Burt Munro to a number of New Zealand and US speed records) at E. Hayes, a combination hardware/department/auto parts store and motorcycle/automobile museum.

Clifden Caves

Helen, the owner of Yesteryears Museum/Cafe in Tuatapere

Yesteryears - old kitchen utensils cover one wall

Cwtch Gallery

We promise we didn't prospect here!

The trees in Southland are definitely windswept

Henry, the 115 year old tuatara lizard, at Invercargill Museum-
he was a father for the first time at 108

The World's Fastest Indian motorcycle, on display at E. Hayes in Invercargill

Paul, going for the new world record in the replica shell at the museum

The next day we flew out to Stewart Island in an 8-seater prop plane. Stewart Island is one of our favorite places in New Zealand – it’s mostly national park, has many walking tracks, has a permanent population of only 400 and not that many tourists at this time of year. We spent one day observing birds and nature on the predator-cleared Ulva Island inside the main bay of Stewart Island, and were able to see two kiwis (birds, not persons) in the wild, a sea lion (very close), as well as a good variety of ferns and other native plants. We also saw Gadget, the rat dog, and her trainer Sandy King - Gadget was trying to find a single island rat that had recently been seen on island trail cameras. The second day we did a four-hour hiking loop piecing together parts of five of the local tracks on Stewart Island.

Up close and personal with Vlad, the pilot

Gadget (down low) and Sandy

Sea lion flipping sand on itself

View from Ulva Island back to Stewart Island

New Zealand Robin - they're very tame, and often come near your feet to investigate what you've stirred up as you walk

The main transport around Stewart Island

A Tui - the R2D2 sound-alike in the New Zealand bird world

A Silvereye

Our kind of KFC on Stewart Island

Stewart Island wharf

We had one more stop on our trip – the Catlins, which is at the southeast end of the South Island. We stayed for two nights near Curio Bay, an amazing place that has fossilized trees and stumps set into the rocks of the bay, huge waves (good surfing on the nearby beaches), and yellow-eyed penguins that come in at night. We also had a day hike to Waipohatu Falls – though the track was steep and slippery in places, the view of the falls and the overall experience was well worth it.

Slope Point, the southernmost land point on the South Island

Petrified tree trunks at Curio Bay

Petrified tree stump

Yellow-Eyed Penguin coming out of the sea at dusk

Fern tree on track to Waipohatu Falls

Deep in the fern forest

Waipohatu Falls

We wanted to do a little more on our last day in the Catlins. We stopped at the Lost GypsyGallery, Brett Somerville's intriguing bus and grounds consisting of homemade "rustic automata" that you wind up or otherwise activate. Our last stop was at Nugget Point, where we viewed the Nuggets (the collection of rocks that mark this point jutting out into the sea) and the accompanying lighthouse that has long kept sea travelers safe. We’d been fortunate to have very good weather overall on this trip, and were happy to end with a good day before heading back to Dunedin and on to Christchurch.