Friday, November 1st
This was another terrific day! Our personal driver and guide, Tony, collected us and our bags from our hotel this morning for a day of exploring the coastal areas of the Catlin Native Forest reserve and transfer to Invercargill. Rain was forecast for our destination, but we were pretty lucky avoiding it until we were tucked into our Invercargill motel in time for dinner.
It's only 200 km from Dunedin to Invercargill so we had plenty of time for walks and talks in the native rainforest and to enjoy the rolling hills of dairy and sheep farm country. Tony is a passionate environmentalist and very knowledgable about the flora and fauna of New Zealand.
On the map above, Tony has written the names of places we stopped.
We went off road many times for short hikes visiting some of his favourite beach and native forest paths. We learned to identify quite a few native trees - rimu, totara, lancewood, matai, fuschia, manuka (tea tree) and we are finally adept at knowing which yellow plants are gorse and which are broome. The first photo was taken of Tina and Tony on the Tautuku nature walk. The second was at Surat Bay where Tony was very disappointed that he was unable to show us sea lions. We didn't have the heart to tell him we'd already had an extraordinary encounter on the Otago Peninsula.
Tony had brought a picnic lunch which we partially consumed on a very windy Cannibal Beach before moving on to a forest where we were protected from the winds.
We arrived at our motel in Invercargill late afternoon. Invercargill, by the way, is the home of New Zealand's only aluminum smelter.
Pictures are fabulous ladies. I especially like the one of you both in front of the falls. Keep having fun xxx Susan
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