Yellow-eyed penguins

Woke up early and headed from our unknown driveway down to the sea for breakfast. After brekkie we headed towards Invercargill which was a medium city, so we passed through after refuelling.

Curio Bay

We did head down to Bluff, famous for its Oysters, but unfortunately they are not in season, Chris was most disappointed. At Bluff we did visit a cool AA marker showing distances to various places around the world, showing us we were over 18,000km from London.

What the wind did to trees

After leaving Bluff, we continued east along the coast towards Curio Bay, unfortunately the closer we got the worst the weather was; hence we skipped a 40 min walk to Slope Point, the most southerly point on the South Island.

The sea

When we arrived at Curio it was blowing a gale and raining on and off. We checked into a cheap campsite and found the most sheltered spot we could.

Yellow-eyed penguin

Then we headed down to the Petrified Forest which is basically a load of rocks with trees that were turned to stone by volcanic ash millions of years ago.

Penguin trying to get out of river

This was also the spot the Yellow eyed penguins exit the water to feed their chicks, we waited for ages in the cold, windy weather but it was well worth it as we saw 6, some performing hilarious exits from the water and up the rocks.

Yellow-eyed Penguin

After this we retreated to the car, made pasta in the extremely small and busy camp kitchen and hit the hay!

Yellow-eyed penguins

Bluff, New Zealand