New Zealand Part 2 (Christchurch, Oamaru, Dunedin and Invercargill)

We arrived back in Christchurch and this time we had to walk 4km or so out to the Eastern suburbs.  This was just a pit stop so we didn't plan on doing much.  We met Steve at the hostel and he said he had been waiting for a few hours for the owner to come to the hostel to sign him in.  That's a little weird.  There was a group of people living and working in Christchurch who were just sitting out back like zombies for the entire time.  Weird, but we later learnt from Charlotte that they were all on meth.  No wonder.  Weird place.  The owner eventually showed up an hour or so late and kept asking us how we had booked.  I kept telling him and he kept asking us again.  I think his memory is a little shot.  He introduced us to our room and asked us what time we were leaving the next day.  The place has a free lift but as it was early saturday morning he just let us know that we were better off taking a taxi.  We had planned to walk anyway.  So we met Charlotte in the room and chatted for a bit.  She had said the place was always full of weirdos.  We went and got some cider and sat around drinking in the room.  Then the owner came back with some Germans he had picked up at the bus station.  He was walking to the room, when he turned around and had this conversation with one of the German guys.

"Do you have a booking?"
(hesitant) "Yeah"
"I don't think so.  What are you doing here?"
(hesitant again) "I was just in the car with you"

Maybe the owner is on meth himself.  Not quite breaking bad level of intelligence, but he couldn't even remember someone who was in the car with him 5 seconds earlier.  Weird.  He then told them that 2 of them would be sleeping on couches because he had overbooked the room.  Great for them.  They said they were happy just to have a room over their heads, but I figured it was a bit shitty as they had paid the same as us.  A few of them went out clubbing later but apparently it was shit.

The next day we walked in to town and grabbed the bus to Oamaru.  We checked into the artsy hostel which is quite nice.  To see the blue penguins cost a lot of money so we decided to wander down to the old town, which is really cute and although its small, its really nice and kind of reminded me of  coastal Devon town.  Very nice to walk around.  From there we set off to walk over the headland to see the yellow eyed penguins.  This is a longer walk than it looks, but we got there just in time to see one yellow eyed penguin exit the sea and a few seals on the beach.  Not very impressive and barely worth the walk out there.  You would need a telescope to see them in any detail and our camera was utterly defeated.  Luckily on the way back we got picked up by an old Kiwi couple and they drove us down to see the blue eyed penguins.  We waited in the dark and saw nothing.  I think we should have paid to go and see them here.  Maybe we might get lucky and see them somewhere else.  Underwhelming and I think that one day is enough here probably.  We caught some live music in a pizza restaurant on the way back and put our $2 in the train outside the steampunk museum.  Worth doing after dark.

The second day we went back to the old town for the sunday market.  Its shitty, but we got to try cheese rolls, which are just bread wrapped around cheese.  Like a calzone cheese on toast.  Oh well.  So we headed to the steampunk museum.  Its much smaller than we expected, but its quite cool and weirdly atmospheric to have a wander around.  It might be overpriced at $10 though.  The kaleidoscope machine was totally crap compared with the steam train.  Next we went off to the Whitestone  cheese factory and got one of their platters of cheese.  This was really nice and well worth the visit.  We didn't see the point in going back over to see the penguins, so we ended up playing quad lingual scrabble with a Dutch guy we met in the hostel.  Was a fun way to kill the evening.  I really liked Oamaru.  Its a cute little town with a lot of cool little things to do, but none of them take much time and one day here is sufficient.

The next day we were off to Dunedin.  Cannelle described it as a shithole when we arrived, but then after walking around, decided that it was a cute city.  The hostels here and in Invercargill both had shitty reputations, but both of them were nice.  I think some of the people here (especially the Germans) have way too high expectations from a hostel.  We went to the Pioneer's Museum which is an interesting place to spend a couple of hours.  Then we went to the I-Site and asked about Sandfly Beach and whether any animals came there anymore.  They told us that there weren't any seals etc there anymore, because too many tourists had scared them off.  We were late told on our tour that they were still there so the I-Site lied to us.  Fuckers.  We have had that from them twice now and it clearly appears that the I-Site is more interested in pushing tours onto tourists than on giving you info.  Another factor in the stealth money grabbing that the Kiwi tourist board is out to gain from tourists.  Its not good when they are lying to you for money.  We went and got the obligatory photo of the Dunedin train station.  Apparently its the second most photographed building in the Southern Hemisphere.  It is a really beautiful building.  Cannelle still had ankle problems from her new boots that had been killing her and the pharmacy told her to try strapping them up.  I offered to pay for the Elm Tour to the Otago Peninsula for her birthday as I knew that she really wanted to see the wildlife and the walking necessary would have been too much for her feet.  She said ok.  We had also booked into Plato for the evening for Cannelle's birthday meal from my dad.  Really nice restaurant.  We had 6 excellent dishes that we decided to split between us.  Very, very good restaurant.  If you have some spare money and feel like a really good meal then I would highly recommend it.

The next day we went to the Sports Museum in the morning, which is an interesting place for an hour or so.  They have a few nice museums here.  At 3pm we were picked up for the tour and informed that we would be getting a free look at Larnach castle on the way, because we had to pick up two Americans there.  An excellent bonus as I knew the Dutch guy had had to pay $75 to go there.  There were a lot of things that were either similar to England (or in this case inferior) that weren't worth the money for me, but may be for people who don't come from countries with that history.  Suffice to say it was pretty but not worth the money.  The tour headed through the wetlands first, where we got excellent commentary on all of the native birdlife and free binoculars to view them from.  The tour was $105 for 6 hours.  We went to the Royal Albatross Centre and saw the huge birds come in over our heads.  We got some great up close views of these majestic birds gliding by and some more great commentary.  The peninsula itself is very picturesque and like some of England's best scenery.  We were here mostly for the wildlife.  The next part was a double header on their own private land.  We saw a feeding frenzy out at sea as the fish bait balls had been disturbed up to the surface.  Sadly no orcas came to the buffet.  Down one side we went and saw the fur seals.  There were loads of them and all the babies seemed to be playing in a baby pool.  We spent about half an hour watching them before we climbed up the hill and descended the other side.  Here walking just ahead of the guide, we rounded a corner and came across a yellow eyed penguin standing just 10m away on the other side of the fence.  He walked away slowly and waited.  We went through and approached cautiously before he ducked down a tunnel.  Five seconds later he reemerged being chased by another penguin who was biting him.  We witnessed this little fight close up.  Cool.  We then went down to the beach and saw 5 sea lions there.  One had even been mistakenly tagged as a male, when we found out later it was definitely a female.  We went round them to see the yellow eyed penguins at the end of the beach.  We could see quite a few from the beach and saw one come back slowly from the sea, while others were moulting.  We even got to see a mating dance performed by two of the penguins, before getting to witness the female sea lion attack the guide after he confirmed she was indeed a female.  Perhaps she is touchy about her sexuality.  The guide himself said it was one of his favourite tours.  He also recommended visiting the Rob Roy Glacier when we were in Wanaka.  It has won a lot of awards for tours in New Zealand and they do a lot of their own conservation work on the lands they took us to.  Normally I hate tours, but I have to say that this was $105 very well spent.  I would highly recommend it.  You won't regret it.  It was also this tour where we first heard the story of how possums and stoats etc were introduced and they have decimated the local birdlife.  Interesting the first time, but we have now heard this story from every fucking bus driver and now its just funny.  I guess they want to make sure they hammer the point home.

We were really enjoying Dunedin and our last day was just a half day.  We probably could have done with one more day to really enjoy it.  The final day we went for a tour round Cadburys World.  I had done this before in the UK, but Cannelle wanted to do it.  Overall it was nothing amazing and probably not worth the money, unless you love marshmallow chocolates.  The chocolate waterfall was cool though and the kids loved it (It was more targeted at them to be fair).  Lastly we went to the Otago Museum, which is really cool and the best of the museums.  Shame we only had one hour to go around it as we could have easily spent more time there.  We got a Nandos in the town and took the bus to Invercargill.  We met Joe there, who had taken buses with us before, but we hadn't spoken to him before.  We agreed to meet him outside the Invercargill museum to see the Tuatara.  The hostel was a funky place dedicated to the film 'World's Fastest Indian' and went out with a Dutch girl and another German guy to see the tuatara and then to eat in the World's southern most Burger King (I just typed McDonalds there by accident.  Do you think their marketing is effective lol).  Had to do something cool there.  The tuatara was cool to see though as it was alive at the time of the dinosaurs.  Still looks like a lizard though.  Not much to do in this town but its ok.

The next day we went back to the Southlands Museum, which is a nice place and a good place to kill some hours in Invercargill before we picked up our bus and we were off to Te Anau and the Kepler.