Dunedin and the Catlins

After leaving our sheep experience, we headed down to the southeast coast. We stopped in Omaru hoping to see penguins but they only come out at dusk and as that's around 9pm and it was 11am we thought we should head on (sadly). The town of Omaru was very cute with lovely old buildings and we stumbled into a radio station which was a one man (well woman) band playing almost war time favourite hits - it was a very cute set up. They also have a cheese factory in town so I bought some gorgeous award winning blue cheese which had the consistency of butter.. mmm and we got some Havarti too.
We continued down the coast until we reached Dunedin. We decided to stay at another holiday park to get some power and a shower. We fixed lunch, bbq's rump steak and salad. and then got ready to head into town on the bus. The town was very nice, small with a number of shops along the high street. We wandered around for a while before we felt it was beer o'clock!! We stopped in the Monteiths brew pub http://www.monteiths.com/nz/ and tasted some of the local stuff, they had a summer brew on tap flavoured with honey and ginger and whilst i like both of these we agreed it didn't work in beer.
Both in NZ and Oz you don't really see any beers you would know, they all have their own brews, which is really interesting but makes ordering hard. We then headed over to the Speights Brew pub http://www.speights.co.nz/Default.aspx and tried a lovely summer special beer flavoured with apricot .. go with me - here it was actually really refreshing. We also ate at the pub, some yummy lamb sausages with onions and gravy (it had started to rain outside so we needed some wintry comfort food). After dinner and some more beers we headed back to the bus and fell into bed.
Dunedin is home to the worlds steepest street.. and the Guinness book of records are not wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_Street,_Dunedin. Its a trek up there but we made it (on foot I hasten to add.. there was no way the campervan was going to make it).
We then headed off to the Catlins taking the Southern Scenic route. It was gorgeous, passing through lovely forests, hills and weeny towns.
We stopped at a beach spot for lunch which is famous for sealions but we didn't see any, we then went to another beach and walked up for about 30 mins to get to Jacks Blowhole. http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1283388864046727746IQBRzJ. It was a large carved out hole which the ocean surged in and out.. it was cool. It was cool also that we had to walk through fields full of sheep to get there. You would not believe how many sheep there are here.. they say the population of NZ is 4.1 million with 36 million sheep and I believe it.
We then took a couple of walks to see some waterfalls and Ryan took some cool pictures of them.
I decided we would spend the night in Curio bay, just by Porpoise bay. If you look at this site, we were staying where the concrete area is at the front. http://www.porpoisebay.net.nz/
There was a motorcamp ground there and we were able to park overlooking the ocean.. it was such a lovely spot and the sun was still nice and hot. People had spotted Hectors dolphins in the surf ( they are very rare) but I couldn't see any (which obviously caused me upset!) We took lots of pictures of the ocean surf crash against the rocks. Ryan and I then joined a family playing cricket.. Ryan is a good bowler but was bowling hard for the teenage kids! I was OK at bating and did quite a few runs. We then headed back to cook kebabs for dinner and sit and watch the sunset. Unfortunately the kebabs did not agree with me (maybe that they were off due to low refrigeration) but I saw them again at 4am as I was sick.
Feeling a little delicate the next day, so went for a walk in the drizzle along the beach, I saw people a long way across the beach looking into the sea. As I walked on I caught site of a dolphin! YAY... as I got closer I could see several of them surfing the waves.. it was such a lovely site. I wanted to wade out with them but the water was so cold my feet which were in were starting to lose feeling! (wish I had a wetsuit). I stood watching for about 10 mins until they headed back towards the ocean. I was then very smiley and headed back to Ryan who was enjoying a lie-in. We then set off heading to Te Anau via Invercargill.