The first thing we realized upon landing in Christchurch, after a short flight from Melbourne, was that it was much, much colder in New Zealand than Australia. Looking back on our decision not to start our trip with New Zealand, we realized we made the right call. Luck also seemed to be working in our favor as we were upgraded from a Hippie Camper to an Apollo Hitop Camper. In retrospect, the Hippie would have been a bad choice in NZ as you have to stand outside to cook and it has been cold and frequently wet since we arrived.
The next few days we spent stocking up the camper, catching up on our email and exploring Christchurch, which is a very beautiful and serene little city. Everywhere you go, there seems to be a quaint river inhabited by a variety of ducks and lined with beautiful foliage with picturesque bridges. One afternoon we enjoyed a long, slow jog through the extraordinary botanical gardens. The stocking of the camper nearly took as a day, but we were able to find everything we desired. Tracy even found an intersection populated with tea shops, herbal medicine stores and whole food markets...everything her little hippie heart needed!
After a few days in Christchurch, we headed for Akaroa. This town was the site of the only French settlement in New Zealand. Of course, the English arrived first, so the settlement eventually fell under their rule, but not before the French left their mark. The town is situated out on the Banks Peninsula and nestled in the heart of an ancient volcano overlooking a small harbour. The hills are also topped with what we thought were beautiful yellow flowers. We only found out later that this flowering plant was named Gas Weed and is actually an invasive species wreaking havoc on NZ's environment.
Upon checking into the local Top 10 holiday ark, we were greeted by a horde of ducks. Based on experiences so far, we have deduced that it is NZ law that every every holiday park keep at least three families of ducks on site and train them to beg for food from the tourists while simultaneously postings signs everywhere not to feed the ducks. One particular duck couple adopted us while in Akaroa and camped outside our door nearly the entire time. When we weren't playing with the ducks, we once again enjoyed exploring the town by running through it. One day we ran out to the historic lighthouse and then randomly weaved our way back through forest trails. On another occasion, we ran up to the tree farm, which proved extremely challenging as the hills are very steep here. We faced down a few sheep on the trail, as often happens here, and even one loudly barking down. The highlight of Akaroa for us though was our trip to see the Pohatu Penguins at Flea Bay. We were picked up along with seven other tourists by a local lady, Shireen Helps, whose family owns most of the land around Flea Bay. What they don't own has been entrusted to the NZ Department of Conservation to look after. We also learned that Shireen and her husband have been looking after the penguins for more than two decades often without government support or funding. They protect the penguins by setting traps for introduced possums and stoats and try to help increase their numbers by providing small wooden boxes the penguins can use for nests so they don't fight each other for the prime spots. Their efforts have not been in vain either as the numbers of mating pairs in their colony has been increasing as of late. Needless to say, Shireen is Tracy's new hero.
Before actually setting off to look for the penguins, I helped feed some lambs along with a few others from our tour group as they wouldn't let Shireen leave otherwise. We then set off on a hike to through the penguin colony. We were not disappointed as we saw many penguins in their nests guarding eggs and even some males emerging from the sea and marching up their penguin trails to their nests where they would take over watching the eggs from the females so they could go eat.
The next stop on our journey was Oamaru, home to rare and endangered, yellow-eyed penguins (YEPs). After getting directions from the local info center, we went immediately to the cliffs overlooking the small colony of YEPs. We soon started chatting with a very funny and nice man named Colin, a Glaswegian, who volunteered for a group known as the Friends of the YEPs. He told us his nice love story. As a simple petrol station worker, he came travelling with his girlfriend from London. Afterwards, they both decidied to leave their history behind and make a fresh start by following his passion of bird protection in NZ. He was nice enough to point out the YEP we thought we had spotted was actually a dummy placed on the cliffs to trick the local predators. It wasn't long before we spotted our first real YEP though, and others soon followed. Tracy even made a cuppa which nicely warmed our frozen hands. Before heading out the following morning, we again went for a run, this time along the town's Skyline Track where we pushed our ways through herds of sheep closely watching where we stepped.
Next we headed for the town of Dunedin. This town like many in the area appears to have been heavily influenced by Scots. ( Tracy disagrees now't like Scotland) The town center is formed streets in the shaped two concentric octagons with streets heading out away from the center. The major attractions in town are Railway station, which we visited, along with a Cadbury's factory and a Speight's brewery, which we didn't visit. At the railway station, we ducked into Scotia, a scotch bar boasting the largest selection in NZ and enjoyed a dram of Laphroaig...tasty. While enjoying our scotch, we struck up a conversation with the bartender who was a Scot herself from Edinburgh. She patiently answered our questions and increased our knowledge about scotch. The next morning we hit the local farmers market at the train station where we once again ran into a Brit. This time he was English though. Tom is one of the owners and managers of the Green Man Brewery, and he moved from Adlington, England, which is very near to Tracy's hometown, about 16 years ago. Tracy took some time reminiscing on her home with Tom before we set off though with a small box of various beers in hand (Tom - If you are reading this, we've really enjoyed your beer so far, you need to get it to the states!).
We headed out to the nearby Otago peninsula in the afternoon. There were plenty of interesting sites, like NZ's only castle, we had to bypass on the way in the interest of time, but the drive was beautiful, most of it on a small two lane road the hugs the shoreline. At the end of the drive, we arrived at the tip of the peninsula, Taiaroa Head, which is home to a Royal Albatross colony. As the albatross where nesting, tours to the top of the cliff weren't running, but we still managed to see many of these magnificent and massive birds flying overhead. We also walked to another observation point on a cliff around the corner from the colony where we could see shags and fur seals. We ran into an Irish tourist we met the previous night in our holiday park and we started comparing notes on New Zealand. He gave us a lot of good information, so we chatted for awhile. It was just long enough for the rain to start setting in and on the way to the car it turned into a gusty little hail storm. Even though we were only two minutes from the parking lot, we still ended up drenched and cold in our camper. That Antarctic wind blows real cold!!!
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