We thought the rain had left but it greeted us when we woke up. We had a couple of things we wanted to do today so on with the raincoats and away we went. Our first stop this morning was McLean Falls. It wasn't that far from the Campground and was only a 30 minute hike from the car park.
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| On the Path to the Falls |
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| McLean Falls |
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| McLean Falls |
Our next stop was Cathedral Caves, a short way up the road. The caves are only accessible at low tide. The gate opened at 11:30 and then we had a 30 minute walk to the caves. Low tide wasn't until 1:20PM and we had a two hour window on each side. The first part of the walk was all downhill until we reached the beach, the a short walk along the beach to the caves.
The Walk to the Beach and Caves
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| Path to the Beach and Caves |
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| Path to the Beach and Caves |
The Walk along the Beach to Caves
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| Beach Walk to the Caves |
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| Beach in front of Caves |
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| Almost There |
The Caves
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| Smaller Entrance |
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| Larger Entrance |
As we got closer we could see that there are two caves and they just keep getting bigger and bigger. They are 30 meters high in some places and the larger one is 130 meters long. The smaller cave slowly curves towards the bigger cave and joins up at the end creating a loop. It was very impressive and very massive.
Inside the Caves
We started the walk back along the beach until we came to where we had to head inland. This is where we paid for our pleasure. It was a 20 minute climb that left us a little out of breath. It was a small price to pay as the caves were pretty spectacular, I had never seen anything like it before.
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| Heading Back |
Tuesday, Day 103, was overcast but it looked like it was going to clear up. We had planned a couple of small hikes which were first on our agenda. We did the Lake Wilkie walk around the lake and then headed to the Tautuku Estuary Boardwalk. Each hike was about 30 minutes excluding chatting time with people along the way.
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| Lake Wilkie |
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| Path to Tautuku Estuary |
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| Tautuku Estuary |
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| Royal Spoonbiill |
Once we finished the walks we headed to Curio Bay but stopped along the way for some lunch. Of course during lunch we got chatting to some people and ended up trading stories for awhile. The New Zealanders are very easy going and quite willing to chat almost as much as I am. However we had to leave as we wanted to get to Curio Bay during low tide as that is when we would get a chance to see the Petrified Forest. This forest of mainly Kauri trees is 160,000,000 years old. If you didn't know it was there you would probably miss it but the signs are definitely there.
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| Petrified Forest |
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| You can see the shape of the trees where they fell. |
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| More of the trees of the Petrified Forest |
The Bay was not just about the Petrified Forest but was also pretty nice to look at. It was also home to a bunch of Yellow Eyed Penguins. We were able to enjoy and capture the scenery but had no luck finding any Penguins.
Right next to Curio Bay was Porpoise Bay where we ended up camping for the night. There was a bit of a vista which gave us a nice view of the Porpoise Bay.
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| Beach at Porpoise Bay |
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| Porpoise Bay |
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| I think these are some type of Shags |
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| Red Billed Gull |
We saw shags and gulls but no porpoises.
We set up camp and had an early dinner as we were told that the best time to see the penguins was around 8:00PM when they were returning from the sea. They called Curio Bay home and that was within walking distance so we headed over around 7:30PM. It wasn't that long before one was spotted and two or three more returned from the sea while we were there. The Yellow Eyed Penguin is one of the world’s rarest penguins as there is only around 4000 of them left. The average size is 30 inches high and they weigh on average 14 lbs. They are quite fun to watch as they waddle and hop their way from the water to the nesting area. We stayed for about an hour taking pictures and just watching them shuffle into their nests.
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| Yellow Eyed Penguin |
The sand flies started to get bad so we returned to the campervan and settled in the for the night. It was the 103rd very good day in New Zealand.
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