Hello from Central Otago where Su and I are officially back into our favourite role as seekers of badly paid work on an orchard/vineyard! Actually I jest, but seeing as we've managed to spend over half of our savings for Southeast Asia on our extended Christmas/Birthday/New Year Holiday we really haven't much choice! But we have had a truly fabulous time so we can't complain - we did come here to see New Zealand after all, and this last week in Dunedin, the Otago Peninsula and the Catlins has been a real highlight thanks to the amazing wildlife and stunning coastline.

My Summer Birthday!

Yey! For the first time ever I had a summer birthday and unlike Christmas it was a scorcher! I could get used to this! My birthday actually started a little early as we planned to leave Joy's on the 29th, so the night before I was surprised by a birthday meal, sitting outside in Joy's beautiful garden in the early evening sunshine. The table was set with a cup of geraniums, freshly picked from the garden, and a jug of iced cranberry juice, and we munched merrily on sausages, tomatoes and salad, before Su presented me with the most beautiful plate of freshly baked raspberry and orange cupcakes, arranged around a candle, with raspberries and miniature roses, also from the garden, sprinkled over the plate. It looked gorgeous and they tasted divine!

On the morning of my birthday I was lured out of bed by the smell of frying bacon as my wonderful sister made bacon butties, which we ate while sitting under the Christmas tree opening my birthday presents (always the child, even at 34! Thanks for mentioning that Dad!) Oh, I do love being spoilt on my birthday! And I was spoilt with some wonderful gifts, including a fabulous huge Venetian glass ring from Su and a ring made of a beautiful and striking piece of tiger iron and a necklace of tiger eye from Mum & Dad. Thank you all for such beautiful and generous gifts. And then we packed up Shadowfax once more, said our heartfelt thank-yous to our Fairy Godmother and set off again, this time for Dunedin.

We made a couple of stops en route, firstly at Moeraki to see the famous Moeraki Boulders and eat our picnic lunch - the leftovers of last night's meal. The boulders were impressive to see, giant round boulders that formed millions of years ago, said by the Maori to be food baskets washed ashore from the wreck of an ancestor's canoe travelling from Hawaiiki to New Zealand, but they were overshadowed by the appearance of a pod of Hector's Dolphins. They are among the smallest and rarest of marine dolphins and they love surfing in the waves, and that's exactly what we were lucky enough to see - at one point 6 or 7 dolphins surfing for the sheer pleasure of it, and also leaping amongst the waves. We stood there for some time enchanted by this magical display, which made us both a little emotional! We then moved on to Shag Point a little further down the road where there was, unsurprisingly, a colony of shags, plus a colony of fur seals. I will never get tired of watching these creatures sprawled in the sun, lazily scratching, or lounging in the water, rolling over and over, so obviously just enjoying the sensation of being in water. They are so chilled!

We eventually arrived in Dunedin early evening and found, to our surprise & delight, a quiet city and a cosy attic room in a chilled little backpackers. There we sat on a picnic table in the back garden, enjoying a feast of prawns, green-lipped mussels and smoked salmon, washed down with a bottle of bubbly. What a fantastic birthday! But you know me, I always like to string my birthday out a little longer, so I modestly dedicated the next 2 days of exploring the Otago Peninsula to me and we set out on another wildlife expedition. And we loved the Otago Peninsula, spending our time happily pottering around its many bays and inlets, looking at the little boat sheds dotted along the coast road, and looking down upon the stunning windswept beaches on the ocean side of the peninsula. We visited the beautiful Glenfalloch Woodland Gardens and tried to see New Zealand's only castle though decided the entrance fee was a little much! But of course the highlight was the wildlife, in particular the Royal Albatross colony and Hooker's Sea lions.

Our visit to the Royal Albatross colony was superb. It is the only mainland colony of these magnificent birds anywhere in the world, and while we were about a month too early to see chicks, we were able to see 4 adult birds incubating eggs on their nests. They are incredible birds that mate for life and only return to the colony every two years to meet up and have another chick, taking in turns to incubate the egg while their partner feeds at sea. They have such a gentle, wise face and a wingspan of over 3 metres. And we were really lucky to see one bird in flight (something not seen for the previous few days, and they run tours every 30 minutes throughout the day). This one was a juvenile who had returned to the colony to find a mate and it was simply awesome to see - they lock their wings into position and simply glide on the wind, only flapping if absolutely necessary. And when the juvenile landed we saw his double wing joints unlock and the 3 separate parts fold away! Amazing!

And then we finally saw proper sea lions! These beauties are known as New Zealand sea lions (formerly Hooker's sea lions) and are a rare species, only living on the south and southeast of New Zealand and the Antarctic. And they are gorgeous! We stumbled on a colony of them on Sandfly Bay, lying on the beach, flicking sand over themselves to keep cool. The males are huge black creatures while the females are much smaller and have a beautiful sandy-brown coat. They have blunter noses than fur seals and (useless fact coming up...) they can move their back flippers independently of each other, whereas fur seals move them together! I loved them, they are really special animals and they were worth every step of the long vertical climb back up a sand dune where our feet disappeared up to our knees at every step!

Another treat for my birthday was the presence of a tv and dvd in our room, and free dvds to loan at the backpackers! So after seeing the albatross, we went back and snuggled down on our beds to watch Dirty Dancing! Ha! A real comfort movie that we knew word-perfectly and we sat there reminiscing about the first time we saw it, many years ago, with our cousin Debbie Sharp, when I think we watched it 3 times in a row! And post-sea lions it was the turn of LOTR: Return of the King, our substitute for New Year's Eve as Su was knackered and we didn't watch to spend too much money (bah humbug!) But as our backpackers was on a hill we did have a fabulous view of the fireworks over Dunedin, plus a glass or two of Ross & Helen's Peach Summer wine. And I have to say that Dunedin was without doubt our favourite city in NZ, lovely architecture, a chilled vibe (though admittedly the suits were all on holiday), and of course all that wildlife close by. We then had a lovely lazy New Year's Day lying around in the Botanic Gardens - perfect!

The Catlins

We drove to the Catlins via the aptly named Southern Scenic Route from Dunedin to Owaka, marvelling at yet more amazing white sandy beaches and pounding surf alongside green rolling hills, before arriving to find that whoever described NZ as having all 4 seasons in one day really wasn't kidding! It was hot and sunny as we left Dunedin and just a couple of hours later, once we'd arrived at our backpackers, unpacked, eaten lunch and popped out to explore, it was lashing with rain and absolutely freezing! But from the safe haven of Shadowfax we did see two young male sea lions play-fighting in the estuary mouth next to Surat Bay, rolling around in the water and catching fish which they were ripping into and chewing messily, bits flying out of their mouths much to the delight of the seagulls! And just a couple of hours later, after dinner, it was so beautiful again that we returned to Surat Bay and had a walk in the golden evening sunshine, watching the sea lions along the beach gradually coming ashore to settle down for the night in the sand dunes. But you are warned to give these fellas a wide berth - they're not called lions for nothing!

And little encounters like these kind of sums up our time in the Catlins. It is almost like going to a different planet, it has a very small population who live among areas of native rainforest and rare wildlife. There are no atm facilities, no major supermarkets, no mobile phone signal and very few Internet points. So you really have no option other than to kick back and soak it all up! We stayed in a backpackers in Owaka, run by Brian and Helen, a lovely friendly couple who popped over in the mornings for a little chat and to show off their gorgeous wee grandson Charlie, who they describe as 'being on constant fast-forward!' And we spent our days happily pottering around the coast, exploring areas of rainforest, waterfalls, having picnic lunches on deserted beaches and checking out the locals!

We had a tantalising glimpse of a fernbird on the Tautuku Estuary Boardwalk, a rare shy red-brown bird, about the size of a sparrow with a long tail. They are endangered as their natural habitat, dry swamp, is declining and they now only live in small pockets of the country. We had a wildlife fest at Nugget Point, named as the rocks that have broken away from the mainland look like gold nuggets sticking out in the ocean! Here we saw many fur seals, lazing around as usual, this time with lots of pups, including a rookery of about 16 pups playing together in a rock pool watched over by the proud parents. There was also a colony of Royal Spoonbills nesting among the rocks and in the trees, which I wasn't expecting to see, plus numerous seabirds; shags, gulls, and offshore we also saw a number of albatross-type birds with huge wingspans gliding over the waves, barely skimming the surface. We can't say what they were for sure, but some books say you can see Wandering Albatross here, others that there are Mollymawks, which belong to the albatross family. Whatever they were, they were awesome to watch.

However, probably the highlight of the Catlins for both of us, though it was a close call, was the neighbouring bays of Curio Bay and Porpoise Bay. We went to Curio Bay to see the fossilised remains of a 180 million year old forest, amazing in itself as you could see tree stumps, long tree trunks lying down and even the imprint of leaves in the rocks. But there was also a colony of yellow-eyed penguins here, which we did know beforehand, but what we didn't expect to see was juvenile penguins, last year's chicks, lying about amongst the rocks in the middle of the day. And just as we'd recovered from the sight of them, up popped 5 adults from the ocean, forming little groups and welcoming each other home, shouting together (their Maori name is Hoiho, which literally translates as 'noise shouter'), shuffling back to their burrows to feed chicks, and even fighting amongst themselves. And just when we'd seen it all we saw a month-old chick come out to feed! It was incredible and very, very special to watch. Then to recover from all that excitement, we went to Porpoise Bay and ate an ice cream while watching a pod of resident Hector's Dolphins surf in the bay! Yeah, we loved the Catlins!

Back to Work

Even poor Shadowfax was reluctant to leave our little holiday and she tried her best to make us hang around by picking up a nail and getting a flat tyre! Sadly we managed to get this fixed quite quickly with the help of Brian and the guys at the local garage and were able to get to Central Otago later that day to find work. And it all happened rather too easily, finding a cheap place to stay and work at a packhouse. Too good to be true? You bet! We're staying in a holiday park, mainly used for seasonal workers, and the rates are really cheap, but to get them you have to pay 2 weeks up front and there are no refunds. No problem - we checked the room, basic but it has a sink with hot running water, the showers are hot and the kitchen a bit of a joke, but perfectly possible for a while. But, it is full of workers, many of whom start work at 6am. Add in fire doors with strong hinges and thoughtless gits and there goes a decent night's sleep - roughly 4am every morning so far!

Then we started work and actually walked home at lunchtime on the first day - grading cherries, paid by the bucket, many people there was earning less than half the minimum wage - no thanks! Anyway, now we're really stuck, we can't leave, well we can but we've paid for 2 weeks, we're not getting enough sleep and are unsure of what to do next. Plus we are also a little unsettled about our visa extension as there is a question mark over whether the work we did at Dean's actually counts, though I've spoken with Immigration again today and it does look quite positive. And of course we can't buy our flight tickets home until we know and prices are rising all the time. Anyway, we're struggling at the moment, we need to earn more to enable us to go to Asia, but it is a bit of a struggle, especially with low wages and bad exchange rates and we can't really decided what to do next. And just to really flatten our spirits Cromwell isn't really a beautiful place, though it is close to Wanaka and Queenstown and Internet facilities here are dire and expensive. I've managed to write this over a couple of days, but I can't even think about sorting my photos yet (and I've taken a lot) We're missing the laptop so much we're actually considering seeing if it can be fixed and how much it will cost us! Anyway, I won't go on too much, this is all part of travel and you have to take the rough with the smooth. I think we're finding this particularly difficult because we've just had such an amazing time since leaving our last job and also we are now on the home run and missing friends and family. There is no doubt that if I had enough money now we would probably finish what we want to do in New Zealand and leave for Asia when our current visa expires, but I don't and I don't want to give up on Asia so we will continue and of course I'll keep you posted. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Lots of love and we are thinking of you all often, Jo & Su, xxx