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Published: October 30th 2005
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- FOOD: Apple crumble muffin - so good. More pot noodles for dinner.
- PEOPLE: Strange hostel man who made us feel we'd arrived at The Shining hotel (but he let me have a room for 15 bucks)
- AREA: Speedy drive on long, straight road across the country to the lovely Dunedin. Scenic Otago Peninsula to watch the shy (and very rare) yellow-eyed penguins. Disgusting fish smell in the van (clutch going). Oamaru to see the little blue penguins.
Thur Aug 18th: Got the windscreen fixed at last after a huge stone had been flung our way by a huge lorry and left a huge chip. But to cheer ourselves up after splashing out on that, we found somewhere to have the nicest apple crumble muffin for breakfast.
That set us up for the long drive across to the East coast to Dunedin. The drive was much better than we expected and it was so nice to drive on long, straight roads at last.
I immediately loved Dunedin (second biggest city in the South), the sort of place you could live in easily with it's friendly feel, pretty layout and old looking spires.
After chilling
out for a while we drove the short distance to Otago Peninsula to Sandfly Bay where we ran down the sand dunes, and walked the length of the beach, past lots of big sealions to see the yellow-eyed penguins. They are very rare - only 5,000 left in the world and we got there just in time (sunset) to get to the viewing point to see about 5 of them come in from the sea and up to their homes.
Over the years they have become very shy due to irresponsible people who shine their car head lights on them, let their dogs bark at them, run up to them, whatever else. So a hut has been built where we can spy on them without them knowing we're there. So cute.
We just about found our way back to the van as the dark set in (the tracks in the sand dunes aren't the most obvious for finding your way back). The hostel Lou was staying in was on a very steep slope so we had fun and games trying to park the van and then we noticed a disgusting smell from it. We cleared the van of the
lovely but smelly fish we'd had earlier, other rubbish but the smell was still there. We ignored it and after spending a while in the hostel where the guy made us coffee and let us sit in front of the warm fire, we went to the cinema where we saw the only thing that was on at that time - 'The Longest Yard'- CRAP!
Even though the hostel had a slight 'The Shining' feel to it (I think we were the only people there and the guy was very strange), I couldn't resist his offer of a bed for 15 bucks as I'd had enough of the van and it's bad smell and near vertical position on the slope. Oh wow, so very nice to spend the night in a bed. Laura resisted his offer to knock on his bedroom window in the night if she needed anything or was lonely out there in the smelly van by herself!!!
Fri 19th: The van still stunk so after deciding it wasn't our rankness (we'd all had a shower after 4 days of not) we took it to the garage and were told the clutch is on it's way
out but we should be ok for the rest of the trip. I had no idea a worn out clutch smelt of gone off fish...
Laura went for another horse ride and Lou and I went back to the Peninsula. We drove right up to the tip but didn't fancy the albatross centre and didn't have time for Penguin Beach so drove back again practically straight away. Such spectacular scenery though so it wasn't a wasted trip.
We drove on to Oamaru and got there just in time to see the blue penguins come in from their hard day's work. You have to pay to sit down and watch them come in but very worth it. We saw about 30 or so of them come in, climb the slope and make their way across the road (looking both ways before they crossed) to their boxes in the man made colony (180 boxes which were made out of concern that the penguins were naturally inhabiting the harbour area).
At only 30cm high, they are the smallest penguins and it was very sweet watching them as even though they go out fishing individually, they meet up with their partner (with
whom they breed for life with - apart from a 10% divorce rate that is) to come back to shore.
They swim up to 70 k out into the sea to fish where they fish all day, diving down up to 1,000 times, before coming back to shore at dusk.
Once they'd located their partner, they came waddling and falling up the slope in groups. Some went wandering off in a different direction from the rest of the group and one or two seemed to get stuck. Their partner who was further up the slope waited around for a while and then went exploring back down to find their loved one and rescue them. CUTE.
A couple of them decided to waddle under the barrier and come and inspect us - looking at us like we were loons for the concentration we were giving them.
After more pot noodles (our staple diet when we eat at the van) we drove to Christchurch, being very careful with our baby and it's poorly clutch. Unfortunately the big park is closed at night so we couldn't park up there but found a nice little square nearby to park in.
Laura and
I went for a quick pint as the excitement of being in a city with bars open later than 9pm was too much temptation. Lou stayed nursing her increasingly worse headache that has now lasted for days. We quickly realised Christchurch is boy racer city. So many flash cars bombing it around a circuit - Friday night eat your heart out.
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