We spent two nights camping - one night on a bluff directly over a beach and one in a campground called Trotters Gully.
The beach campground was pretty amazing - Jordan was able to pull the van into a small grassy pad completely surrounded by flax. The ocean was crashing all around us, and we were completely cut off from all the other campers. Down the road from the site was a "park" with a beach covered in petrified wood. Here was one of the nesting grounds for the hoiho, the yellow-eyed penguin. We waited for several hours at the beach waiting for the penguins to come in for feeding. However the next morning I got up before dawn and was able to catch a glimpse of three of them as they made their way to the sea. Curious little creatures, they travelled in short, powerful hops from the brush out to the waves.
The next night at Trotters we went on a hike to several nearby caves which were somewhat underwhelming. The path turned and wandered up the mountain, eventually emerging from the brush in to rocky crag. The last sixty or seventy feet were a perilous scramble up smooth rock with narrow footholds, but the view was outstanding. I wimped out on the last ten feet, but Jordan made it to the top. As he reached the summit an old man came scrambling up the back, an even more perilous path. With a nod and a wave, he slipped on down the path we'd just climbed up.
