Curio Bay is a small cove on the south side of a small headland that protects Porpoise Bay from the Pacific Ocean and Foveaux Straight. If you walk west away from Curio Bay campground along the rocky coastline you stumble upon the remains of a petrified forest. This is also where some of the few remaining Yellow Eyed Penguins have their nests (5 nests in total) at the base of the low cliffs where they join the mud and siltstone. Porpoise Bay is a long, curving white sand beach, with enough swell to surf.
When we arrived at the camp ground an older gentleman decked out in full tourist garb (black knee socks with Birkenstock sandals, khaki shorts with a plaid short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked in, an enormous black camera dangling around his neck and an olive green Tilley hat in pristine condition shielding his face which still had smears of sunscreen on his nose and ears.) scuttled up to us and whispered “there are DOLPHINS down there!”. Iain looked at me and grinned and as soon as we’d paid up and found a camp site with an ocean view we donned our wetsuits and headed down to the Porpoise Bay beach. There was a small cargo van parked on a grassy slope just above the beach with surf boards for rent so Iain grabbed one for the day (we’d left ours in Wellington not expecting any surf in the South). Within 20 minutes of arriving at the camp site we were surfing with the Hectors dolphins, the rarest in the world. They are very small, no more than 5ft long and mottled grey in color with small, rounded fins. There was a whole pod with babies and they were right in the surf with the people. As long as we didn’t chase them they would come right up along side us. It was amazing!
After a few hours the water got too cold so we headed up for a shower and set out to explore the rest of the area. The headland is not much more than a grassy knoll about half the size of a football field surrounded by sandstone and mudstone cliffs. The campground is set on the narrow strip of land that separates the knoll from the mainland and the two sides couldn’t be more different. Our camp site was very private with 10 ft high flax bushes surrounding it on 3 sides. There was a 3m wide strip of grass between our site and the edge of the cliff which was about 3m high. The rocks stretched out from the cliffs in a flat shelf for about 30m then there was nothing but the fury of the Pacific. We spent many hours of our three days at Curio Bay watching the waves crash against the boulders that had tumbled down from the headland. The only way I could describe the scene was ‘biblical’.
Our first night finished with a walk out to the petrified forest (180 million years old) which survived wind and water erosion but has been almost completely destroyed by tourists who each want to take a piece of history home with them. We walked along the beach in the hopes of seeing some penguins and were rewarded for our stealth and perseverance. We came upon four of the comedic little birds waddling around in the rock pools after a hard day of fishing and feeding their young. We chatted with a volunteer who spends each night of the breeding season guarding the nests from over enthusiastic visitors, stoats, cats, and dogs. He was full of amusing anecdotes about the social life of the penguins and the various intrigues they get up to. Apparently their nest habits are more like soap operas than Disney cartoons! As the sun set and the sky turned purple and blue Iain and I walked home along the road watching the moon and the stars materialize one by one. We had found a truly magical place.
We did not want to leave Curio Bay but were awoken three mornings later at 7am by a frantic DOC officer who informed us there had been an earthquake in Chile and there was a Tsunami expected to hit our coast in less than an hour. We’d had a late night so neither of us were well rested but we grabbed our gear and within 15 minutes were heading down the coast highway to Invercargill, bleary eyed and confused. We found a radio station that confirmed there was a Tsunami expected (I was beginning to think it was a terribly bad joke being played on the tourists) and we listened to updates as we drove and arrived in Invercargill about the time the first waves were being noticed by the bouys (20 whole centimeters!!!). Coffee, internet and a hotel were our next priorities and we holed up for 3 nights to watch the end of the Olympics, do some work and prepare for Stewart Island.
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