The Most South We Will Go!

As we've been traveling around, I've been noting "Well, this is as far south as I've ever been." constantly. When we're driving south (like to Dunedin itself) this "southest moment" came every nanosecond, but sometimes the "most south" record stood for longer. Like for about a month, the most south I'd been was this McDonald's in Christchurch. Kind of fitting, I thought. ;)

Anyways, today we decided to drive through The Catlins down towards Invercargill but (due to a lack of anything much we wanted to do there, winter, having a place to stay in Dunedin, and the hours required for the drive there and back) we didn't go all the way down. We'd thought we'd go as far as "Cathedral Caves", some sort of sea-created caves on the southern shore of New Zealand's South Island, and as close as we cared to get to the southern-most point on mainland NZ (we didn't actually make it to the northern-most point on the North Island, so we didn't entirely care about reaching the southern-most.. oh well). Anyways, Cathedral Caves seem to be closed for the winter. Blah. New plan! We thought we'd go to Curio Bay, instead, but as light faded, we realized we wouldn't be making it and thus our most south spot would be just before the turn off to these waterfalls we checked out instead. So now, until another trip replaces it, the furthest south that Jacqui, myself, and Dexter have all been in our lives is this unimposing spot on the highway (where the green arrow is), which is also pictured below. lol.

Anyways, we saw some neat things on the way! The lighthouse at Nugget Point, the Museum in Owaka (shipwrecks!), Surat Bay, and of course, the aforementioned McLean's Waterfall.

Walking out to the lighthouse! Everywhere in NZ is filled with these well-maintained barely-traveled pathways.

These rocks reminded me of some sort of sea-stonehenge. We're happy to pose in front of them! 

Ok, here they are on their own, for you purists out there!

We lucked out with our Winter weather, so far! So pretty and nice seas.

The lighthouse from afar! Looks precariously perched out on the cliff

Heading into the Catlins now, a nice region filled with hills, plains, and sheep! Dexter loved seeing the sheep!

Another of NZ's famous one-lane bridges. This work crew didn't seem to care that we pulled up behind them and took their time wandering around and deciding to eventually move the truck off the bridge..

Pretty views basically everywhere you look.

And this is WINTER! Amazing, right? Though admittedly it's a little chilly at 9 or 10 degrees Celsius, you just can't beat the sea and sun like this.

Little watering hole for the cows up here. :)

Dexter and I walking towards the McLean's waterfall. I'm a little pouty since we've realized that we're not going to make it to a coastal point for our most-south. :(

We're rewarded with a nice waterfall though! Lots of these in NZ too!

Dexter loves it too! King of his castle. :)

We're the most south we've ever been! There's trees here!

The record, according to our Nuvi.

Surat bay, hunting for Sea Lions (as opposed to Fur Seals, which we've seen lots of over the past many months)
(sadly we didn't see any)

Dexter! He's pretty excited about being off-leash and on his 3rd walk of the day too.

Jax took so many nice pictures of this sunset. Definitely one for the picture books! So pretty!