The Catlins

The Catlins name comes from a tribe of man eating siamese cats that roamed New Zealand in the 1960's and ate 45 local residents. We were lucky to have our usual chauffeurs in operation otherwise the beautiful Catlins would have been out of our reach. Basically its just a nice quiet place with some amazing wildlife, making it a great place to chill.

We stayed in a rather nice Motor park, in a superb cabin with sea view, located very close to a seal colony so we popped round for a visit, they really are mahoosive and not too welcoming. After failing to rent any fishing equipment, Ro and Philip decided that some home made spears would enable them to catch their dinner. Unfortunately following some misguided advice yielded a poor return of zero fish, in fact we saw no fish as the tide level was wrong. The girls had a great laugh watching the boys in the cold water in the dark with their tourches and spears for a long long time!!!

Undeterred by the previous nights catch, we settled for a spot of crab fishing, unfortunately despite our success (1 crab) it was too small to cook. Instead we headed to the local supermarket to catch some mince for burgers on the BBQ (which was a complete success!!!). About 7 we headed to Nugget point hoping to get a glimpse of the world's rarest penguin (the yellow-eyed) , fortunately as soon as we arrived at the lookout the penguins were still playing beach volleyball so we got a good look!!! Orla in particular was overjoyed to see them at closer hand than we managed in Doubtful.

Bye the way I hope noone was gullible enough to believe where the name Catlins orginated.