A good and bad day. Firstly, the bad. Ive had bad toothache for the last few days and despite many tablets it is not improving so the first thing we did today was to find an emergency dentist and made an appointment for 3pm. That was good as it gave us time to visit the places we wanted to see. My tooth needed the root canal done so the initial treatment has been done and further followup will be needed when back at home. My, that one tooth can sure spread pain about!
Our estimate of the Whistling Frog Resort is that it is well located but needs further updating. It was also very expensive to other places weve stayed.
We left the Whistling Frog and continued 3km up the road to the McLean Falls. These are well worth visiting. The walk in through forest takes 20mins finishing up steps to about midway on the falls. There are several layers of falls finishing in a shute and a large pool at the bottom. They are quite beautiful and left the Purakaunui Falls from yesterday for dead.
160Myr old fossil trees remaining after inundation by volcanic ash. This picture shows some remaining stumps
to skip them as we had several other places to visit and wed seen such landforms before. Our route then turned off the main road to Waikawa which sits alongside a very long inlet. Further on is Curio Bay on a short road. This is a popular spot with a visitor centre and excellent viewing platforms and path to see the petrified forest and penguin colonies. We didnt see any penguins but the petrified fossil forest was worth seeing. The area had been inundated with volcanics 160 millioon years ago during the Jurassic period. Some trees had been bowled over and others just had their stumps remaining. They were now silicified and part of the wave platform. Even though there are other places with fossil forests in NZ, this one is one of the few of this age in the world.
Our next place was Slope Point which was a 40min walk out to the coast and the most southern part of the South Island. The view out to the reefs and Foveaux Strait is magnificent. And windy! It blows so hard there that even the tussock grass is flat, short and pointing in only one direction. Well worth
Our last stop along the coast was Waipapa Point which has a light house and information about a terrible ship wreck in 1881 where 131 people lost their lives. Though there has been many ship wrecks over the years around NZ, this one is memorable for the number of people drowned even though it was close to shore. It brought about a time of building many light houses around the coast.
And on to Invercargill where the first appointment was the dentist followed by finding our We are at Tui Hideaway which has a lovely large garden backing on to Otatara Reserve. It is a B&B where the house facilities are shared with us. We walked through the reserve and to a pub/restaurant not far away for dinner which was very good. The sun did not set until 10pm.
Disappointingly, we have found the ferries to Stewart Island booked out for the weekend and we cannot go. I guess that means were destined to never visit so itll have off the bucket list. We didnt want to book earlier because we wanted to check the forecast first. Oh well .............
