Visit the Catlins, New Zealand

The Catlins is a totally absorbing off-the-beaten-track area, an untrodden world where small patches of tamed farmland have made little impression on a landscape of formidable cliffs, wild forests, pretty bays and calm estuaries.

The variety of birdlife is an ornithologist’s delight, with many sea, estuary and forest birds in residence and, if you are lucky, you may encounter the endangered yellow-eyed penguin.

Here life decelerates and hours are whiled away walking on the beach, whitebait catching, wandering through native bush and exploring the Cathedral Caves.