After having lunch of a self-made couscous salad next to some really cute sea lions hanging out at a small natural harbor we continued to the actual shag point (a shag is a cormorant), a rock outside in the sea with a lot of shags hanging around there when we practically stumbled over 2 seals who hid in the grass and under a small cliff. So cute! But of course we respected them, holding our distance but taking a few pictures. Then further on to the penguins, but there was just one tiny one and we could only see it through our camera tele-lenses. On we went, another two hours something towards the mountains again towards Omarama. We had to reach our hostel until 8pm and we hardly made it, stopping only at a bit useless Maori drawing rock (hundreds of stupid youths had already drawn over it).
Finally we reached the backpackers/motel at Omarama and after the sun shining here up in the mountains all day the temperature now dropped pretty quickly. All rooms here were in separate small buildings which meant that if we wanted to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night we had to go across the entire complex and it was very chilly, so no thank you. In the morning I even discovered a thick ice layer on our car. Has it gone from summer to winter in one single night?
Luckily, when the sun rose it melted the ice away and it was quite hot again. After talking to two hitch hikers who had been working in exactly the same hostel that Tina is going to work after I have left, we drove onwards taking a detour to the Clay Cliffs near town. The gravel road leading towards it was a mess and it took a long while to reach the washed out clay rocks, which had formed interesting peaks over time. We walked along them, me taking a break at some point while Tina headed on up the hill for a bit when there was a 4x4 coming near and exactly next to me noticing that it could not go further. The driver was obviously not experienced, the road was very tiny and full of enormous holes, but he had to go through it anyway…before getting stuck right next to me. So he drove backwards the whole way to the car park, which meant we were not able to walk by until then. Aaaah, men at the wheel, a nuisance… ;-)
We had a snack in the sun at Twizel’s Musterer’s Hut, with very good French fries (honestly, you cannot rely on getting good fries everywhere!) and I had a meat roll, which always tastes like a mixture of meat. There is a definite whiff of lamb in it and all is rolled in a sort of pie dough. Very tasty! After some time we came across a stunningly blue lake with a mountain range in the far back of the it. It was Lake Pukaka and we had never seen anything like it. No waves, crystal clear water and sooo blue. We drove down the Eastern shore on a gravel road until we got a good view of Mount Cook and its surrounding mountains in the far back of the lake. It would have been great to jump into the lake and take a swim but we found it still a little bit too cold even when the sun had returned. After enjoying some time on the lake shore we returned on the road and continued towards Lake Tekapo. The only free backpackers was in a motel called “Lakeview”. No rooms in its backpacker part had any windows (except on some ceilings) but for the rest it was alright.
The next morning after check-out we took a look at the Mt. John observatory that was situated on a nearby round-shaped mountain that looked more like a hill from afar. But when we were on top we had a stunning view all around onto Lake Tekapo, small Lake Alexandrina and the mountains all around us, snow covered mountains and rolling grassy hills. All trees and the tiny cars riding around the mountain resembled model train figures. Wow! Being back in town we visited an old church which had been recommended to us. We were not allowed in because there was an Asian wedding going on, so of course we stayed to get a glimpse of the bride. After this we drove on to Geraldine to Rawhiti Hostel. It was fantastic, almost no people there, a lot of space and a cozy atmosphere. There were a lot of weirdos though, especially an idiotic Canadian who added a stupid comment to everything that was going on and a Kiwi grandma of 54 who looked 74 and was talking nonsense all the time. But of course there were normal people as well. The German girl from our room was very nice to talk to. When we arrived the sun was shining and so we spent the afternoon in the garden. I was finally sewing some of my clothes, Tina was writing her diary and I continued with writing a bit of my blog.
In the evening we went to the local cinema in a very old building to see “The Kingsmen. We had pre-booked an old couch instead of a normal seat. The film was cool and very funny indeed. I would have also liked to watch its action scenes again in slow motion to count the amount of deaths. There were exaggeratingly many, but that was part of the plot. After all it is a spy movie.
The next day we continued to Christchurch, our last permanent stop. We had booked three nights in “The Old Countryhouse”, a very cozy hostel. Except cooking dinner we didn’t do much that rainy day and tried to pre-pack our bags, spent time on the free internet (it is really hard to come by any of that) and made plans for the next two days. The next morning we first went to a pharmacy to get some anti-nausea-pills, because we had very cool plans for today: a swimming tour with dolphins in Kaikura. As we did not want to risk any seasickness we’d rather buy the pills. Unfortunately this and the fact that we were off our city center roadmap (and mind you, Christchurch is very big) we got lost a bit. None of the signs actually send us to a highway but to different suburbs which we didn’t know. So there is one thing, New Zealand, to improve: your way of signaling where people need to go, even people who might NOT know their way around without signs. It could all be way better! Well anyway, we got lost of track and time, which resulted in us being in a very big hurry, even being threatened that we might not make it to Kaikura to catch our boat at all.
As we had booked the tour for 170$ this would have been quite a pity. But as the trip was postponed a tiny little bit and we just arrived in time, had a gear fit on us which consisted of fins, a snorkel set (even with my eye condition), a wetsuit and a hood for the head and off we went to the tiny boat. There were 14 swimmers in total and a family who just wanted to watch the dolphins from the boat. And we were sooooo lucky. When we reached our destination there was a pod of at least 60-100 dusky dolphins swimming about. And we had 4-5 go’s to swim with them.
Some of them even swam 20 cm under my body or next to me, so near you could almost touch them, but I wouldn’t try as I was so overwhelmed and I could not quite believe that at one time there were 5 dolphins swimming underneath me at the same time. Woooow! They were very playful and some of them propelled themselves into the air and splashing back into the water.
To attract them we were told to make funny noises, so I kind of made a very high-pitched mock-dolphin noise, and sometimes, as this was very exhausting business and I lost a lot of air, a stranded whale-sound. When the lot of them were gone too far our boat would collect us and drove back around to them so we could have another go. It was soooo cool!
I actually skipped the last round because I was very exhausted and I could feel a flu creeping up on me. Even when the wetsuit was designed to keep you reasonably warm it was still quite chilly in the water and all this noise-making and swimming after the dolphins took a price. And I am paying that now as I have a very big cold at the moment, instantly arriving on me on the way back from Kaikura. We had a little snack in town before Tina drove back and I almost passed out for most of the 2.5-hour-journey.
The night was not pretty at all but still the next morning we headed on our last daytrip for the Banks Peninsula towards the pretty French town of Akaroa. The Banks Peninsula is actually an old volcano crater with the sea leading to the center of it.
The drive was another 1.5 hours around the crater with a stop at Hilltop Tavern, where you have a beautiful view onto the crater bottom filled with sea water and onto Akaroa at the far back.
The town itself was French-owned and still shows this by the street names (‘Rue …’). As the town has a tiny harbor and many very old picturesque wooden houses we could have stayed here for longer, but alas.. not enough time. We actually ran into an elderly couple we had stayed the night with at Catlins Beach House and so had a coffee with them in a beautiful rose garden café and caught up on what we had been doing the past week. They were really busy doing a course here and a tour there. We told them about our dolphin tour and they were on fire seeing a few of our photos. On our way back we desperately tried to find a do-it-yourself car wash because the next day we had to give back the car and it was REALLY dirty. And after that we actually managed to sell off most of our camping gear. We are only sitting with two mattresses and the roadmaps now. Hopefully we get rid of them today on our last day. We will only do a little bit of shopping now, maybe another op-shop (=second hand) and then we are off to the airport to give back the car. Tina will stay another night in Christchurch before heading North and I will fly back home. It was a cool journey and it will definitely not be my last one.
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