Day 47 Timaru

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Day 47 Timaru

This morning we went in search of the wild blue penguins again as we had stayed near a colony. Apparently they come ashore here on a night and in breeding season. As we approached the shore we noticed that it was yet again another visitor centre. To see a few penguins round on the cliffs you had to pay for a tour but you were allowed to the breeding area where we saw sea lions sunbathing.

We continued to drive north and stopped in a town called Timaru as we had heard on the radio that there was a truck racing event on today. After finding out the location at the information centre we head off in search.

The Timaru raceway is located a few kilometres out of town, near the airport as the land is very flat, in fact it is called Levels. We arrive at the raceway at lunchtime just before the racing is due to start. After cooking burgers for lunch we take our seats and position ourselves next to the circuit to watch the racing.

There were a few races on today including classic minis, V8 utes and trucks! Each race was 8 laps and there was some good bends and straights for us to watch them race. The pits were open for us to wander round and see all the vehicles during racing. We were lucky with the weather today as it was the first sunny day we have had since leaving the North Island.

Mid afternoon the Royal New Zealand Airforce Red Checkers Aerobatics Team arrived to put on a show. The 5 little propeller planes gave a fantastic performance in the sky over the track, just like the Red Arrows but a bit slower. They even managed to land on the track do a doughnut on the tarmac before taking off again!

The racing was quite exciting, especially the V8 utes as the the 2 utes at the front were virtually touching bumpers most of the race. The final race of the day was the trucks, which was great fun to watch as we have never seen vehicles this size race before. The trucks reached speeds of up to 100mph and managed to go sideways and even spin on the track.

Tomorrow we have booked to go white water rafting so we drove about 50km west to find somewhere to stay so we have less of a journey to do in the morning. The roads on the map showed that they were minor, however its turned out that we had to drive 20km to Fairlie on a gravel road. Oliver enjoyed trying to power slide Camilla the camper round the bends on the loose gravel.

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