Since it was dark and raining on our drive the night before, we wanted to actually see the Catlins in the daylight the next morning. There are some really beautiful stretches of coastline, with lots of sheltered and pretty much deserted coves. We headed towards one and stopped along the way to visit some waterfalls. They were called Purakaunui Falls, and we just had to walk about 10 minutes through the forest to get there.
Next, we headed along to see some of the coast. We went to some bay/cove that we don’t even know the name of. It was really pretty and there was no one there but us. We just drove down a little gravel road and wound up with a beautiful sight in front of us! There was a little hill that you could drive up, and we kind of wanted to see what was up there. As we were driving, we realized that the road probably had a few too many potholes and ditches in it for this to be a good idea! We were starting to get stuck, so we decided to bail out of that plan while we were ahead and before we ACTUALLY got stuck. (Seriously, it would have been quite possible that no one else would have come along to that cove all day.) So we took some pictures and then continued on our way.
Here's some typical Catlins scenery - green rolling hills dotted with lots of sheep!
Our drive to Dunedin didn’t take that long and once we brought our stuff into the hostel, we took a quick power nap. Then, we had to be up to make it to our tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory! (We had a little ordeal parking. We found a garage to park in, but were confused by the signs as to where exactly we were allowed to park, so I had to back up several times. Then, once we finally got parked, we were trying to get rid of some of our coins and were paying with all 10 and 20 cent coins, which the machine would randomly decide to spit out on us!) So by this point we were running a little behind schedule and literally ran from the parking lot to the Cadbury factory because we didn’t want to miss our tour!Kim and I at the Cadbury factory (notice the hairnets we were required to wear!):
I really enjoyed the tour. The smells were absolutely delicious, and it was really interesting to see everything on the conveyor belts, going through all the different assembly line processes. PLUS, we got a good amount of free candy throughout the tour! The highlight of the tour for us was when we were going through the packaging part of the factory. There were 3 women working on putting the finished bags into boxes. Cate signaled to one of the women to throw a bag over to her. The woman smiled and mouthed, “I’d love to,” but shook her head that she really couldn’t. But then, she threw it down the line to another woman, who was able to throw it over the fence without our tour guide seeing it. I just thought it was so funny and cute that they were willing to risk getting in trouble, just to throw us a bag of chocolates.We left the factory feeling slightly sick of candy. We had heard that Sandfly Bay on the Otago Peninsula was a good spot to view penguins. Since we really wanted to see them, and it was just a short drive outside of Dunedin, we decided to go for it. We parked the car and had to walk about 40 minutes to where the viewing spot was. It was a rough walk, downhill, through some steep sandy areas and then all the way across the beach. The sun was setting though, and the lighting just kept changing, so I took a TON of pictures.
On the beach, we saw a sea lion and literally got within a few feet of it! 
When we finally got to the penguin viewing hut, we WERE able to see some penguins, but they were pretty far away. We had reservations for a tour of Speight’s Brewery at 7, so we could only stay for a little bit. The walk back to the car was really tough though – much worse than the way there! We were all out of breath by the time we got back.
The tour of Speight’s way pretty interesting. They call Speight’s beer “The Pride of the South,” and the people on the South Island ARE actually pretty proud of their Gold Medal winning beer. We got a tour all through the brewery, seeing exactly how the beer is made. Then, at the end, you of course get to sample it as well! Speight’s is currently producing 6 different types of beer: their regular Speight’s, a dark beer, Pale Ale, Pilsner, Porter (dark, chocolately taste), and one which they call Old Distinction.
After our tour, we had planned to go to the Speight’s Ale House for dinner, but we didn’t realize that it was so popular that we would need reservations. Our tour guide suggested a different restaurant instead. We went to a place called “Lonestar,” where we split 2 main meals between the four of us. We were all exhausted and it was getting late so we just went back to the hostel and went to bed.
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