Ambassador Motor Lodge Oamaru

... 1493;ף בושי ביץ' (Bushy Beach) ליד העייר 92; אומרו - אחת ההפתע 93;ת הנעימ 93;ת של ניו זילנד. בסך הכל יש רק 4000 פרי ...

Everybody weak up from the 2 Volvo engines how started at 6:45. Breakfast, was also huge then the dinner last night. Then the same way back. Boat then Bus, again a ferry and then we take own bus and drove to Quam. There we learned how to play CurlingJ I wonJ

Left behind the dreariness of Dunedin - watched Harry Potter movie last night in Dunedin along with most of the city! We felt very under dressed as most people were there in the full get up with capes and broomsticks. First pangs of homesickness for London on watching the movie!

Picked up our hire car on Saturday for our road trip across the South Island up to Christchurch. Luckily they'd upgraded us to a spacewagon for free as we've got so much stuff we'd never have fit into ...

After managing to pull ourselves free from Dunedin we drove northwards along the coast. Here we saw a lot more of the (by now almost normal) pretty beaches and greenery. However, when the sun was low on the horizon, we came across a most definitely NOT normal stretch of beach :P. We are not fully sure what the actual beach there is called, but a nearby town is called Moeraki and what makes this beach is so unique are 'The Moeraki Boulders'. Now we didn ...

... her husband Merv were so wonderful to us and the town of Oamaru was beautiful. It sits right on the ocean and has a wonderful downtown historic area. It has the best preserved historic buildings in the country (according to a brochure) but I agree.

So for the next 4 nights we hung out with Elaine and Merv. They live on 5 archers and have an amazing home. They grow ...

... released MacKenzie rather than let the dog die! Sunday Mary and I headed for Queenstown - we had hope to go to Stewart Island but time ran out on us. Anyway Queenstown has changed completely in the past 10 years. The woman in the Motel said that she went off for 2 weeks' holiday last year and just about didn't recognise it when she got back! It has grown incredibly and mostly for the tourists. According to Bill, Kiwis don't go near it. Grown or not it ...

... wondered if this relationship was 'on the rocks.'             Having completed our observations of the beach storming we pulled out. Last official  count for the night we heard was 48 penguins arriving home. This not an usual number this time of year. It can very from 10 to 200 depending on circumstances. Some spend three or four days at sea feeding so they can stay on shore for a couple weeks while they molt and replace their feathers.               

... that seals and yellow-eyed penguins can be sometimes be found. It didn't look too promising until we walked a bit further into the reserve and spotted both fur seals and yellow-eyed penguins, neither of whom seemed at all bothered by our presence! Again, by the time we'd walked back up to the car, another convoy of tourists was arriving and, thanking our good fortune, we continued onwards to Dunedin.

... cameras. Our first stop in the Catlins was Curio Bay where we found this amazing little beach house. Our view from the livingroom window was grass, sand and sea. Once again I fell asleep to the sound of the ocean and felt soothed in a way that isn't possible without the wooshing of the sea. We saw seals basking on beaches and were warned by signs and guidebooks to keep our distance. We saw the near-extinct yellow-eyed penguins, only seen in this country. The day we went ...

... up and went into the little blue penguin colony to watch them come ashore from the designated stadium seating. the smallest penguin species in the world, these little guys form groups at sea and after fishing all day, wait until just after dusk to come ashore. depending on the time of year, there can be a couple hundred making the climb up the rocky shore and a quick dash to their nesting boxes a few yards away in the bushes of the protected colony. because the ...