We are catching up with some of our journal entries and here we write about the Catlins, the south east part of the South Island. After checking into the Nugget View Kaka Point motel, a small place in a small town (1 pub, no gas, no stores) and throwing together a quick dinner, we head out to catch the yellow eyed penguins (hoiho), some of the rarest penguins on earth, as they come in from the sea to feed their young. We drive to Nugget Point and sit quietly next to a bird watching blind since it is packed with people and there is no more room in the small structure to watch the birds. Everyone is extremely still and quiet since we don’t want to frighten the penguins and risk having the chicks go hungry. The penguins waddle in to the beach preening themselves, looking around as they cautiously head up the beach toward the nests and soon go out of sight. After a while we lose interest and head to the nearby lighthouse built in 1869 to watch Fur seals and sea lions, sooty shearwaters, shags and a breeding colony of gannets. The roar of the sea fills our ears, and the visual drama of the vast skies, endless ocean and plummeting cliffs is incredible. We take off driving South on highway 1 toward the bottom of the world and a town called Invercargill. Our first stop was to see the Moeraki Boulders, unusually large and spherical boulders lying along a stretch of Koekohe Beach on the wave cut Otago Coast. The boulders look like dinosaur eggs but more spherical and are grey-colored rounded masses of mineral matter that have been dug out from the mudstone enclosing them and gathered into one place on the beach by coastal erosion. Very fun to jump around on and attempt to roll.