I’m confused by the abundant life and abundant plastic pollution here.  It’s easy to slip into a fantasy that a sort of balance has been achieved on Midway Atoll.  Birds nesting amidst plastic cigarette lighters, bottle caps, toys, umpteen bits and pieces of plastic; turtles pulling up on the beach to rest among plastic buoys and ghost nets and fuel containers; seals frolicking under the pier with discarded shampoo bottles – all of it getting along, or so it seems from a cartoon view.  But then you begin to encounter the decaying bodies of albatross, almost all of them containing some amount of plastic, and some completely choked with it that there’s no mystery how this bird died.

Explore this subject and some harrowing but phenomenally important images here.

Learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch here.

We had a break from Wanaka and took a trip down to the Catlins Coast which is at the southern most tip of New Zealand…there is nothing after that until you hit Antarctica…

The place is full of wildlife…I finally got to see some Penguins (they are tiny and well clumsy) and Seals (lazy – just sleep on the beach all day) and Sea Lions (big mean dog/bear like brutes but this didnt stop some stupid tourists going way too close) and the end of the rainbow (no treasure sadly)

We went on some great and relaxing long walks on the beaches and around the coastline. It kind off reminded me of Wales or Cornwall until I noticed the many palm trees dotted around and the 2.5m long 300kg Sea Lions…

We went over the mountains to Haast on the west coast to try to find some penguins…

After trekking around loads of beaches and through the rainforests, we saw a bunch of penguin signposts and info boards but not a single damn penguin, but it was good fun anyway…

The west coast of the south island has this incredible ancient weathered feel, with massive lush rain forests catching all the rain that falls as snow on our side of the mountains, and miles and miles of empty beaches with huge pounding surf and far too many sand flys.

I’m on a proper mission to see penguins now…stay tuned.

The South Pacific is a part of the world I have always wanted to visit, and will definitely be doing so in the not too distant future. Before leaving the UK, I watched the first 2 episodes of a great series on the whole South Pacific region, and through the luxury of torrents have been catching up on the rest of the episodes here (BBC Iplayer still hasnt gone international and I havent yet found a way to fool the site in to thinking I am in the UK)
The narrator went to my school too…(yea I know, typical middle England accent…)

Below is an incredible clip from episode 1, well worth downloading the whole thing if you like the look of it…

Another great bit of filming from an earlier BBC documentary: