Slope Point

Our Epic Easter road trip days  5-6

Today we conquered the Catlins (not the Catalans).  The Catlins is a region in between Invercargill and  Balclutha. We drove from scene to scene. One of the first places we went to was “Slope Point”, the furthest most southern tip of New Zealand. This would be the farthest south everyone in my family would have ever gone. Since the storm over the night in Invercargill was so strong, it brought over super high winds on “Slope Point”. It got very cold as we walked to the edge of New Zealand, the winds were almost knocking us over. After Slope point we took a small drive over to a short hike. There we hiked to go see some small waterfalls. We also ate lunch at the trail entrance. While driving to Dunedin we saw a hitch hiker. My dad decided to pick him up. He told us he had to hitch hike to town because he sometimes has seizures that legally make him unable to drive. We learned he was a fisherman in the small town of Balclutha. After we let him off we had dinner in the small town. Then we drove to Dunedin and arrived late at night.

 Moeraki Boulders 

Baldwin St (worlds steepest street)

In the morning we walked down to a cafe to have breakfast. After breakfast we visited the local Dunedin museum. We learned lots of information about Dunedin. The next museum we went to was the Cadbury Chocolate Museum. There we got lots of free chocolate and we watched several hundred gallons of melted chocolate fall into processing units. I don’t think I ate chocolate for several days after that museum. My mom took advantage of the fact that the chocolate was 1/2 price and stocked up on chocolate. The last thing we did in Dunedin was climb the steepest road in the world! I begged my dad not to drive it as I would have a heart attack half way up. My mom and I braved the road and climbed most of the way up. Believe it or not, many people have houses on the street and drive up it! We left Dunedin later in the afternoon. On the way back to Christchurch we stopped and saw some completely round boulders. It was really strange seeing boulders, completely round in the middle of a sandy beach. Most of them were cracked open and mostly hollow. My dad then made the conclusion that the boulders were slowly being eroded out of the nearby cliff. After we left the unusual rocks we drove to see some more penguins. We stayed in the area for a good 10-15 minutes then gave up. Just as we were heading up the hill, some people pointed out that there was one, lone penguin hopping down on the sand. That was about it for the penguins this trip.