Purakaunui Falls

I woke to a beautiful dawn breaking over Jack's Bay. Cold coffee never tasted so good as I stretched my body out. As the sun was breaking over the horizon I climbed through sheep paddocks high on bluffs above the sea to a place called Jack's blowhole - a massive inland sinkhole that plunges into an abyss that the sea rushes into.

I hiked through patches of native forests thick with tree ferns and Rimu trees resounding to the calls of native birds. I walked out on a windswept beach looking for sea lions, but found only a few skulking oyster-catchers. Watching huge waves curl and smash against rocky headland was like watching a true battle of the titans. Truly tempestuous seas heaved against screaming winds that broke over waves creating long plumes of sea spray.

I tiptoed through wet, mossy forests and over clear, cold streams that tumbled into waterfalls. Shivering, I took shelter from a sudden hail storm under the boughs of mossy trees beside this waterfall. Waiting, I listened to the falls and it was like I was in Middle Earth for awhile. But then, as is so common in the Catlins, the sun broke clear and bright the next moment and I was returned to the present.

Cresting a ridge road I came on an enormous rainbow arcing over the deep blue Pacific. I stopped above Tatuaka Bay in the full brunt of howling winds peering down on battalions of waves marching to the beach. And I chugged along in my trusty adventure van along curvy roads that changed from thick forests to sheep filled pastures, and from steep hills to tidal estuaries.

At the end of the day I reached "true" land's end, a place called Curio Bay that is about the most southerly part of the south island. On the point the winds were ferocious and the booming of the waves on rock thunderous and humbling. Before I fled the winds I walked out on the rocky tidal flats of the bay at low tide examining the most amazing geologic anomaly - the fossilized remains of an ancient Gondwana forest from the carboniferous era millions of years ago. Like that ancient forest, I'd like to preserve the memory of this amazing day in time. May I always remember it :)