Tuesday 31 March 2015

Day Nine – Oamaru to Dunedin (Pt 2)

Stopped at Palmerston for a break where we found a second-hand Scrabble game, we’re back in business.

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Next stop Puketeraki lookout.

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Then onto Seacliff and just out of Dunedin at Waitati we ran into some very dense fog. Stopped at The Good Earth restaurant opposite the Otago University, strange food and a weird way of presenting a cup of tea!

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The Knox Presbyterian Church in Dunedin.

Day Nine – Oamaru to Dunedin

After leaving Oamaru just after 9am we made our way to the Moeraki Boulders, unfortunately the tide was coming in so we didn’t see all of them, it was cold, misty, wet & did I say cold?
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Took a few photos before leaving for Shag Point to hopefully see the yellow-eyed Penguins and Seals. On the way there I saw a lovely old apple tree near this house? so Thelma did a bit of scrumping and then she also found a banana-passionfruit vine full of ripening fruit, one of her favourites that is now considered a pest and no-longer seen very much except in out of the way places like this. Turns out the apples were all wormy but the banana-passionfruit are delicious, not many left!
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The other fruit are Feijoas that were kindly given to use by the motel owner in Wanganui. When we arrived at Shag Point all we could find were a few seals including this one who looks like he was in the middle of his moult, would you believe the size of that seaweed he’s lying on?
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Unfortunately no penguins to be seen so after taking a few photos of the seals, seagulls & shags we were on our way back to the main road when what should we see from a distance?
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What looked to me like little growing trees although Louise thought they looked like birds, when I blew up the one & only photo I took there were our penguins, on the other side of the rocks where you couldn’t see them from the lookout (in the background)!!! PS It turns out they weren't penguins, they were shags, well it was called Shag Rock after all!
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Day Eight - from Lake Tekapo to Oamaru

I’m starting to get way behind doing the blog as you can see, not enough hours in the day! Having too much fun to be sitting at the computer for too long and wifi is very intermittent. These photo’s are my favourites so far, prepare to be absolutely gobsmacked!

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Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo

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Mt Cook

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It only took three goes with the camera timer, 10 seconds is not enough time to scramble over rocks at my age!

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The view from the Hermitage Hotel

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What looks like snow is actually a tiny spongy spreading plant all over the tundra.

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Lake Pukaki

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Dry river bed, we passed dozens of these, it’s been a dry summer down this way.

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A mini white cliffs of Dover!

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Lake Aviemore

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The Benmore Dam, we weren’t able to stop right at the top because the carpark was taken up with a filming crew, we were hoping to bump into Robert Redford but no luck there, bad luck for him!

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The sheep that got away! I don’t think I’ve ever seen brown sheep before, there are heaps of them down here, all shades of brown and some with white faces.

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The St Martin’s church at Duntroon, built 1901.

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and the Duntroon pub.

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The Papakaio Presbyterian Church, built 1893.

Today we are leaving Invercargill and heading for Manapouri and Lake Te Anau.