This Saturday Dan, Lexie (the other PhD candidate from the States) and I borrowed a friend's car and took a day trip to the nearby Catlins. The Catlins is an area on the south island known for untouched native forest and coastline. It's also only about an hour from Dunedin which makes it a nice day trip. Driving was fun too...but more on that later.
First stop was Nugget Point. Here we are in a hide (a small shed really) trying to locate penguins on the beach. No luck for us today seeing penguins.
This is Nugget Point with its lonely lighthouse. There are high cliffs all around, and the winds are always howling. The winds on New Zealand are strong and constant since we are just a small island in the path of the "roaring 40's" as they say here. The path to the lighthouse was very exciting with the cliffs and the winds. Looking down where the waves hit the rocks you could see all sorts of seals and sea lions.
Here I am hanging on for dear life on the walkway around the lighthouse at Nugget Point. See the nuggets in the background? It's hard to tell from the photo, but they are huge. We could see seals playing in pools that collected on some of the nugget-islands.
No comments:
Post a Comment