New Zealand Day 18 – Kaka Point

The day dawned dry and remained that way, though it was overcast but warmer than yesterday. We drove out to Nugget Point this morning and walked out to the lighthouse. The view is fantastic and there’s a fur seal colony at the base of the cliffs. It was quite easily to see the seals, even though they were a long way down below us. The view of the nuggets from in front of the lighthouse is beautiful.

From there we drove down to Cannibal Bay – I don’t know why it has that name. A walk along the beach brought us close to 4 Sea Lions. They are huge! They also spend most of their time on the beach sleeping. We did see a small amount of movement, flippers waving and throwing sand over their backs, rolling over and raising heads to look around. A short walk through the dunes took us to Surat Bay where we saw a few more Sea Lions. Amazing creatures, we got lots of photos and hopefully some good video.

We had lunch at a café in Owaka then drove to what we were told are the most photographed waterfalls in New Zealand. Purakaunui Falls are apparently on most scenic calendars. The walk in to the falls was a short, pretty rainforest walk and the falls are quite pretty, but far from the best falls we’ve seen. They didn’t live up to the hype as far as we were concerned, but nevertheless they are nice to see. There was also some very enticing and musical birdsong along the walk – no sign of the singer, though.

Our exploration ended with a drive into Balclutha for a quick supermarket trip and then back to the B&B for a cuppa and to download the photos from the camera before tea.

Tomorrow we move on to Oamaru; there’s no need for us to get up too early because it’s only a couple of hours drive (without any side-trips and photo stops).