We left Dunedin on Saturday 13th and took the Southern Scenic Route, which goes round the southeastern coast of the South Island.

Around Balclutha, we decided to stop at the Stirling Cheese Factory - mainly just to break up the journey. We turned off the road to Stirling and found a sign to the factory so we followed it along an unmade, very bumpy road. We kept going and going and going. No sign of any cheese factory anywhere!

It wasn't as if the place was a figment of our imaginations or our guide books. Another couple had mentioned it in their blog just a few days ago. Had aliens spirited the factory away at the dead of night, perhaps because Brie is as valuable as gold on their planet? Were the locals hiding it from us as some kind of joke? We will never know…

We had lunch at the picturesque village of Pounawea, where a river flows into the ocean. There was nothing particularly special about it really, but it was just a nice little place off the beaten track. It did have a house called the Rover's Return, however, which presumably belonged to ex-pat Brits. Oh, and we saw a couple of lads aged about 10 bombing around the streets in a dune buggy, much to their delight.

Next on the map were the Paurakunui Falls. Again, nothing to write home about (though we are… sort of) but nice and pretty, if rather small.

Highlight of the day was probably the view over Tautuku Bay from the Florence lookout point. The bay was like a postcard, with a blue sea and white waves hitting a completely deserted golden sand beach, backed by tropical forest.

On the Sunday, we headed off to the Cathedral Caves in a neighbouring bay called Waipati Beach. These are only accessible at low tide, but we were fortunate as this was at the civilised time of 10.20am. The largest cave is 30m high and they were quite impressive in a simple sort of way.

Next on the agenda was meant to be Niagara Falls - no, not THOSE Niagara Falls, but a rather smaller southern hemisphere version. Unfortunately, the aliens who abducted the cheese factory had obviously decided they wanted some fresh water to wash down the strong cheddar and had taken the falls as well. Despite a sign that said 'Falls, 100m' we couldn't find them.

Are we rubbish, or what?

We did have better luck (or competence?) with trying to find a petrified forest. (I suppose that given the fact it was 160m years old, the aliens probably thought it was past its sell-by date so left it for us to find.)

The 'forest' was in Curio Bay and if you hadn't known it was there, you would probably miss it. It was just some tree stumps and fallen trees, but remarkable to be visible at all given that when the trees were growing dinosaurs were stomping around.

As we scrambled over rocks trying to find more pieces of petrified forest, we saw a few people looking at what appeared at a distance to be a white blob. As we got nearer, we realised it was one of the rare Yellow Eyed Penguins (see Oamaru blog), though a juvenile so without much eponymous colour round its eyes.

Considering that these birds are meant to be very nervous creatures and there are all sorts of dire warnings that you mustn't interfere with their daily activities or even go on some beaches after 3pm in case they see you and expire in a fit of panic, this particular penguin seemed very content with a human audience.

It just stood there on the rocks adjacent to the water and preened itself occasionally. Then it would look at its circle of admiring onlookers and preen itself some more. It was clear that the people were more in awe of the penguin, than the bird was in awe of the people. One of the humans was even meditating in the lotus position in an apparent state of euphoria.

Perhaps he was the first disciple in a Yellow Eyed Penguin-worshipping cult?

Richard