New Zealand: What are the Catlins?

McClean Falls of the Catlins.

Every natural place in New Zealand looks like it fell out of a prehistoric time machine. There were times when I was walking alone in the woods (on a very well marked trail, mother) and I was worried that a velociraptor was going to rip out of the woods and take me into the deep. That fear was not entirely founded, however, because I could not imagine how anything larger than a dog could actually make it’s way through the thick understory of every single forest that I tramped. All of the above and more could be said about the Southland.

I never planned on making it to the Southland. I intended to get to Queenstown and then loop back North, but the travel gods blew me some unexpected magic. I ended up driving South with two fantastic gentlemen from my home country. They were headed to the Catlins, so I was headed to the Catlins. Up until that point on my trip, I had never heard of the Catlins. I also discovered that not many other people in the WORLD had ever heard of the Catlins. This left me with absolutely zero expectations.

What are the Catlins, I asked Google as soon as I found internet connection? “A dramatic and beautiful part of New Zealand.” and “A rugged, sparsely populated area, the Catlins features a scenic coastal landscape and dense, temperate rainforest.” and that’s about it. These descriptions could satisfy almost anywhere on any of the coasts of New Zealand. So once again, I had to ask myself, what are the Catlins?

A place where you can stumble into a bakery after driving 200 km, only to find Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes for breakfast.

A place where you wake up in your tent and it’s in the middle of a rain puddle (every morning).

A place where you have to fill up on gas in Invercargill or you will never make it out alive. Only the people who live in Invercargill know that Invercargill is a real (important) place.

A place where you drive so much that you say, outloud: "Let's stop Invercargill." Just because it's more fun than not saying it.

A place where you can stop on the side of the road at any time and marvel at the Romanticness of the ocean and the jutting ocean cliffs. The rain never stops, the wind never stops, and the clouds always look ravenous.

A place where the spray from the Tasman Sea will hit you, even though you’re standing on the top of a cliff.

A place where there are so many waterfalls of so many different shapes and sizes that you almost  (but not quite) become bored of waterfalls.

A place where a brown smush on the horizon is actually a lush, prehistoric canopy of dripping moss and roots that wrap around each other to form tree trunks so thick that other trees grow on them.

A place where yellow penguins sneak out of the surf and everyone becomes quiet because no one can imagine those little creatures navigating the vicious rocks and pounding tide.

A place where you watch the tide closely, so you don’t get trapped in the ocean when you were just trying to touch the giant kelp (that was so large and thick that Maori used it as fabric).

A place where a hostel is somebody’s house, and somebody’s house is actually a sheep farm, and that sheep farm lets you pet the baby sheep.

A place where you can see dinosaurs. (Google Tuatara)

A place where you can reach the Southernmost tip of New Zealand, and you’re still only halfway to Antarctica.

Slope Point. Housed by the Catlins, this is the southernmost point of New Zealand. Note how there is a relative similarity between the distance to the equator and the distance to the South Pole.

A rare yellow penguin in Curio Bay (a petrified old growth forest) in the Catlins. The waves were small that day.

New Zealand: Milford Sound--You Gotta See it to Believe It

 

Passing through Fiordland National Park on the way to Milford Sound. There's water everywhere!

The only thing I can hear above the roaring streams of thick water running into the Tasman Sea is the click click click of cameras trying to record every minute of it. This is the first tourist thing that I have actually paid for since arriving in New Zealand, and now I understand why it’s called a “tourist thing”. I’m on a cruise in the middle of Milford Sound, the Eighth Wonder of the Natural World, during a torrential downpour and chronic mist storm, and all I can see are all the people taking pictures of waterfalls.

New Zealand: Christchurch

Peeking through the chain link fence at the Christchurch Cathedral.

My strongest impression of any New Zealand city was my first impression of Christchurch. In every seeping corner of New Zealand, people spoke of the earthquake: they escaped from it, they trembled with it, they housed a refuge of it, they lived it. They all told me it was broken, split in half by the fault line that gorges through the center of the South island. I listened, but I didn’t understand until I arrived there, in a bus packed with backpackers and kiwis alike, trying to find their home again.