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Date: 27 Apr 2009 04:34:38
Title: A Hobbit, Three Waterfalls and a Lighthouse - The Catlins, South Island, New Zealand
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46:27.0S   169:49.0E
 
On March 18th, the four of us left Te Anau and headed south for Invercargill, the southernmost city of New Zealand.  Our sunshine bubble had pretty much burst by then and we traveled in the gray drizzle down what's called the Southern Scenic Route.  We arrived in Invercargill late morning and made a beeline for the E. Hays & Sons Hammer & Hardware store.  Yes, a hardware store, but like the bridge in Queenstown, this was a very special hardware store.  It was hardware heaven for hardcore motorheads like Don and my father, but it also housed a large private collection of miscellaneous old motor-things including motorbikes, several of which used to be owned by Burt Monroe, and one of which was none other than the World's Fastest Indian.  Where else but New Zealand can you go to a giant hardware store and find a world famous historical motorbike displayed right next to the chainsaws and oil?
 
Picture 1 - The World's Fastest Indian.
 
After peeling the men folk out of the hardware store, we went in search of a cafe for lunch.  We looked at the guidebooks, we scanned the streets, we parked the car and scanned some more and could not find a Dad-approved cafe (defined as an eating establishment that offered at least one Dad-approved meal, which must be served minus sauces, salads and other Dad-offensive condiments and/or food items).  To be fair, Dad had endured two cafe lunches in a row where in the first, his burger was served on a bun smothered in sauce and in the second, his 'American Hot Dog' was served in a cheese bun and smothered with chili (or was it onions?).  In both cases, Dad had politely asked for plain and gotten smothered instead.  It was a bad string of smothering incidents.  Also to be fair, we couldn't seem to find a cafe with that perfect balance of remarkable food at less than remarkable prices.  Lunchless, we left Invercargill behind and pushed on toward our motel in Papatowai, a tiny nonexistent town with a population of six-ish, located on the southern coast of the South Island in an area called the Catlins.
 
An hour or so later as we drove on in the drizzle, glimpsing the angry-looking gray surf of the southern coast every once in a while and not really anything else, we were all feeling hungry and anxious that food was not something we were going to find - Dad-approved or not.  It was about then that we approached an intersection that appeared to have an information center/gas station/cafe on one corner.  I ran in on a recognizance mission and found not one but three Dad-approved meals on the menu - and luckily, the one-man operation was still serving lunch at the late hour of 2:45.  We ended up with the best blue cod fish and chips for Mom, Don and I and a ham steak garnished with pineapple (Dad-approved!) all cooked and served beautifully by the one-man operator.  Marvelous.
 
It wasn't too long after we left the Stirling Tides Cafe and entered the rolling hills of the Catlins that we found the four-room Southern Secrets Motel and the Hobbit.  We never did catch his name, but when we first saw him running in his red gum boots, rust-colored sweat pants and black t-shirt from the house next door (which he also rents out to travelers) to meet me in the tiny one-room motel office, his unruly, curly hair, clean-shaven face and short stature just screamed 'hobbit'.  If he were barefoot it would have been better, but it was raining, so the gum boots were understandable.  He proceeded to tell me, very fast and all in one sentence, all the info we needed to know.  "The store is just across the street and if you want to order fish and chips for dinner, you have to place your order by 5:30, we only get one TV station here but I have a collection of 700 videos that are free for you to use just call the office number on your phone and leave me a message, when I service your room I'll leave you the videos, if you want dinner at a restaurant, the closest one is in Niagara Falls about 20 kilometers away, they close at 9 so you have to get there early, the store here closes at 6, I usually ask people to pay in advance but because I have another party here waiting to check in I'll get it from you later, be careful about how much water you use because we are on a cistern system here and water is limited. Cheers."  After this rather stern Hobbit speech I was dismissed and we unpacked the car and settled into our chilly rooms.
 
The next day (March 19) we went on our three waterfalls and a lighthouse tour of the Catlins.  Unlike the West Coast and Fiordland, the Catlins are not known for majestic mountains or fantastic fiords, instead they are known for remote hills filled with sheep and a pretty, but not jaw-dropping coastline, with a few nice waterfalls thrown in.  Below are the pictures:
 
Picture 2 - Before the first waterfall, we stopped to see the Lost Gypsy Gallery, which was just down the street from our motel.  The self-proclaimed 'organic mechanic' and apparent owner of the Lost Gypsy Gallery, lives and tinkers in this bus.  It's very dark inside, but once our eyes adjusted to the dim gloom, we found countless contraptions lining the walls, floor and ceiling of the gallery/bus.  The trick was to find the right button to push, crank to turn or metal piece to touch to get the contraption to turn, move, jump, light up, start a train in motion, whistle or simply go whirr.  It was a very, very odd place.  The organic mechanic was at home at the time, tinkering with something on his workbench, but he seemed a bit of a recluse and not interested in talk.  Go figure. 
 
Picture 3 - Mom and Dad on the trail.  Each waterfall (and lighthouse) involved at least a twenty minute walk, sometimes steep, sometimes muddy and sometimes challenging.  Neither Dad nor Don were very excited about the walks, but Mom and Dad made it through all of them and it was only Don that wimped out at the end.  There was also a blowhole we were supposed to go see, but that involved an hour walk through a field of sheep.  Luckily, before Mom and I embarked on the blowhole quest, we ran into a few other tourists who had just finished the walk and didn't recommend it to us.  After some discussion back in the car, the four of us also agreed to skip the walks to the historic train tunnel (what's to see in the dark?) and concrete horse trough (concrete horse trough?).
 
Picture 4 - Waterfall #1.
 
Picture 5 - Waterfall #2.
 
Picture 6 - Waterfall #3.
 
Picture 7 - The lighthouse was cool to see, but it was significant to all of us for another reason.  It is probably the furthest south we will ever travel.  46 degrees, 27 minutes south latitude.  Furthest south we'll ever travel unless Don decides it might be fun to extend our trip even longer and sail to the Antarctic, or around the south end of South America.  Thankfully, the chances of either are slim.  Who wants to be that cold?
 
On March 20th, our last day in the Catlins and southern reaches of the South Island, we decided to go to Dunedin and back - about a two hour drive each way.  Below are pictures from that trip:
 
Picture 8 - This is Tunnel Beach, so named for the tunnel-like arch in the sandstone peninsula that juts out into the water.  A very nice piece of coastline, but the hour walk down and up from Tunnel Beach was really something.  Only Mom volunteered to make the trek with me, and made it almost the whole way.  Descending, we had to try hard not to roll down.  Ascending we couldn't stand up straight without feeling like we'd tip over and roll down backwards.  Mom proclaimed it the steepest hill she'd ever climbed.  Excellent - another item to cross of her 'Things to do before turning 80' list.
 
Picture 9 - New Zealand is not known for its stunning architecture, therefore we felt compelled to take a picture of this, the most photographed building in New Zealand - the Dunedin train station.  Not bad looking.
 
Picture 10 - Just outside the Dunedin city limits is the Otago Peninsula, which we decided would make a nice after-lunch ride before heading back to our motel and the Hobbit in thriving Papatowai.  Little did we know this would rank right up there in the top 10 scariest South Island drives.  It was another not wide enough for two cars to pass, mostly gravel track, up and down steep hills and around a million blind curves.  Don, our fearless driver, particularly enjoyed it.  Some of the views were quite marvelous though.  This was one of them.
 
That about sums up our stay in the Catlins.  I realize now that I left out the part about Niagara Falls.  We did go to Niagara Falls, New Zealand, but we didn't go to the falls.  We decided that once we had seen the real thing, anything else just wouldn't measure up.  We did go to the Niagara Falls cafe for dinner though.  Excellent food.  And Dad-approved on top of that.  We went there after waiting a good 45 minutes on the beach in the misty rain for the extremely rare yellow-eyed penguins to arise from the sea after a day of fishing and waddle up the beach to their home in the bushes.  They never came, or if they did we didn't see them.
 
When I went to the door of the tiny one-room motel office to check us out on the morning we left Papatowai, I heard the Hobbit call out 'One minute!'.  I looked more closely through the glass panes of the motel office door and I saw him, crouched down in his red gum boots, rust-colored sweat pants and black t-shirt, holding a mirror and an electric shaver.  The cord on the shaver was so short that he had to nearly lay on the floor to take care of business.  I was still trying really hard not to laugh or even smirk by the time he finished, put away the shaver and mirror and opened the door to me like nothing odd had been going on in there.  I paid for the rooms, thanked him for his hospitality and we said good-bye to the Hobbit, three waterfalls and a lighthouse.
Anne
 

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