Last night it rained so hard that it sounded like marbles were hitting the top of the camper instead of raindrops. It rained for most of the day as we made our last push home to Queenstown where our journey began 3 weeks ago. We set out this morning to explore the The Catlins. It’s the coastal area at the bottom of the south island. The southern most point of New Zealand is Slope Point. I think the trees describe the fierceness of the Antarctic winds that pummel the point better than I could.
From there we just explored all the little towns and countryside along the coast. I think the majority of the sheep have been hiding out in the Catlins. They were everywhere! We stopped at Curio Point and got lucky since it was low tide. The entire area that is exposed at low tide is not made up of rocks, but of petrified trees from the Jurassic Era. 65 million years ago, there was a forest there and now it is fossilized. Sounded kinda lame in the Lonely Planet book, but it really was quite interesting. Ranger Jim was there to answer all of our Petrified Forest questions.
There are two towns separated by 44km. The first town is Clinton and the second town is Gore. The stretch of road between the 2 towns is called “Clinton-Gore, The Presidential Highway.” I just thought that was great! I wonder if Al and Bill know about the Highway?
We got into Queenstown just as the sun was going down over the lake around 6:30. Our day had started at 9:30am. It was a lot of driving, but there was always something beautiful to look at.
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