Skirting the Southern Coast

31 March - 4 April 2011
With four fine days of weather behind us, we fled Milford Sound for the southern coast. After a stopover in Manapouri, a day walk at the start of the Kepler Track, and two umbrella chasing horses to guard us at night as we slept in a cushy cottage, we found ourselves staring boldfaced into a wind that reminded us where we were—at the end of the world with only Antarctica to blame. Big chunks of ice certainly have a knack at creating some dreadfully cold weather conditions.


Not brave enough to step foot onto a ferry headed for Stewart Island and promising ourselves that we would come back in the summer when the wind wasn’t quite so cold, we headed east from southern tip of New Zealand, reminiscing about our time in Tierra del Fuego. In comparison, the weather in the sheep dotted southern end of New Zealand is quite pleasant to what we experienced in its Argentine counterpart.


We headed straight for a place called Curio Bay, named as such because of the curiosities that call this place home – a petrified forest in the place of tide pools and one of the nesting locations for the rarest penguin in the world- the yellow-eyed penguin. After parking our car in our campsite, surrounded by 20ft high and deep flax, we meandered down to the beach to count tree rings and stand on petrified logs while dodging the incoming tide. At sunset we retreated to a viewing platform to wait for the return of the yellow-eyed penguin, which spends its days foraging in the southern South Pacific Ocean. Waiting as patiently as possible for their return, Nick and I recalled a few reasons why we are botanists and not wildlife biologists- one being that you don’t have to wait around in the cold for a plant to show up.


Suddenly, a cute, medium sized, yellow-eyed penguin arrived! Standing at the edge of the petrified forest the bird warmed himself in the days last light, looked a little confused and very lonely. After ten minutes or so, obviously disappointed that no one else had come back from the sea, the penguin waddled and hopped his adorable way past petrified tree trunks to his burrow. His progress was interrupted only by his own declarations of home coming, which were executed by throwing back his head and flapping his wings to let out a whopping call. It being the end of the breeding season, he was the only one to come home that day—the others already apparently finished for the season.


In Dunedin, the ever windy and now quite rainy weather diminished our spirits and nearly blew us off the cliff of the Otago Peninsula.

With a plan to head towards Mt Cook National Park, we drove north towards Oamaru and a colony of the smallest penguins in the world. On the way there, after stopping off at some randomly rounded rocks on the beach – the Moeraki boulders – we looked inland and saw clear skies over newly snow topped mountains and made the quick decision to skip the mini penguins and go straight to Mt Cook and the promise of good weather.