Blogs from Oamaru, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania

We’ve finally made it to New Zealand! Had a very early start today. We were up just before 3am to get to the airport for our delayed flight @ 6am. Thankfully, there were no more delays and we finally arrived in Christchurch just after 11am. It was a pleasant surprise to see that SIXT didn’t charge us for the day we missed due to our 20 hour flight delay, so that’s one less battle to have with Qantas to claim compensation for. We’re quite pleased with our Skoda Kodiaq, not only does it have all the gadgets you could possibly need, it’s also a nice shade of blue! Even with our later than planned start to our first day in NZ, we managed to catch up with our original plans for today, a drive over to ... read more

Before leaving Denmark, we had talked about how we were going to travel, and we had come across this world wide volunteering platform, Workaway. You live in someone’s house, help out with whatever they need help with 3 to 5 hours a day, and in exchange you get to stay there, and depending on the work required, maybe also food. We agreed that we wanted to spend part of our stay volunteering like this, and getting Ollie and Alba active in doing something locally. Anyone can sign up and we looked at the many possibilities of work ranging from garden work, working with animals, painting, building, cooking, shopping, babysitting etc. We contacted at few people in November to set something up, but as we arrived in NZ just two weeks before Christmas, not many people were ... read more

Today we head further south along SH1 to Oamaru, which is allegedly popular with penguins. Following our lack of success in finding seals, I have my expectations set to low. We stop at Timaru, which my guide book describes as a small port city. I have visions of a quaint little fishing town. It’s actually a stonking great container port. We stretch our legs with a wander round Caroline Bay Park with gardens running to sand dunes and the beach. It has a nice rose garden, some weird sculptures and a rather sad aviary. We briefly consider leaving the doors open to liberate the birds. Timaru also has an art gallery. This has even weirder sculptures but very little art, most of the interior is earthquake damaged and cordoned off. The only exhibition is called blue ... read more

J'avais quitté Christchurch avec Cheyenne et John direction l'autumn arena festival à Oamaru, vendredi matin. En chemin on s'arrête voir les colonies pingouins bleus, mais ce n'est pas le bon timing, par contre la mer déchaînée par les tempêtes est superbe. Oamaru est une ville musée, aux rues pavées type vieux NYC, et aux rues montantes type San Francisco. Interessant ;) Arrivés au festival, parking inaccessible haha, trop de boue! Le festival était parfait, petit, familial, 350 personnes staff compris ;) Boueux avec les pluies torrentielles dues aux deux cyclones coup sur coup qui sont venus chatouiller les côtes néo-zélandaises ;) Mais un festival sans boue c'est pas un festoch certains diront. Des workshops sympas : danse contact, danse de l'amour, acro-yoga (bcp bcp environ 8h en 2,5 jours) et toujours ce même rictus à la ... read more

Hi folks, got up this morning at 'Old Bones Lodge', pure luxury, said good-bye to 'Thelma and Louise', (the elderly ladies), they were so helpful, gave us loads of tip bits, the American girl turned out to be a Kiwi and she was working on the South Island but came from Auckland, so she to gave us tips. Looked like the Japanese lad drunk himself to a stupor in his room, saw Gloria bring out quite a number of beer bottles. Last night we went off to see the blue penguins, I put 4 layers of clothing on, sooooooo cold and windy out there. Well we managed to see 1. !! Yep, that was it and that little thing looked so scared, which I don't blame him with people pointing down at him and a couple ... read more