Camper days 4-7

Saturday, Jan 24 5:53 pm, and again the next morning

Location: outside of Christchurch, in a bizarre motor park stealing internet from the house next door.


This is going to be another long post, so go get the popcorn now. We have such long days in the camper that I have so much to talk about! Hmm.. I left off in Kaka point, right? Well, that's where I'm going to start.

So the next morning (Thursday, I think?) we drove down the road to Nugget Point, which was very pretty. We walked some, saw some baby seals playing in the shallows (the cutest little black wormy tadpole-like squiggly things ever), a lighthouse, and M even spotted a penguin. That was very nice, and by about 10 or 11 we went on our way towards Dunedin.

We mostly bypassed Dunedin to go out to the Otago Peninsula (the harbor created by the peninsula is Dunedin's port). That was utterly terrifying. The main road along the peninsula was about 10 feet across, a two-way highway that was right next to (I really mean _right_ next to) the bay. This meant that the extremely curvy road with a speed limit of 70 km/h had a shoulder of about 3 inches, another inch of grass, and then dropped straight down four feet to the water below. Every curve we went around (which was the whole road) I clenched my teeth and strangled the window crank until my knuckles were far past white. By the time we finally got to our first destination, which happened to be the very end of the peninsula, the back of my shirt had streaks of wetness from so much nervous sweat. It didn't really help that it was about 90 degrees outside and our car doesn't have air conditioning, and that D has been very close to the edge of the road the whole trip (the steering wheel is on the other side, so he's not used to sticking out on the left). Eventually, after the most terrifying hour in my life, we got to the Great Royal Albatross colony at the end of the road. Albatross are giant sea birds that only live on the tiny spot where we were and, where most of them are, a tiny island somewhere in the South Pacific. We didn't see many, but they were pretty neat.
After we saw those, we drove back half way along the scary road (although not as scary this direction, because instead of being four inches from the ocean we were four inches from cliffs) to the holiday park we wanted to stay at in a town named Portobello. The park itself was okay, not great, with a grumpy woman working at the desk and very difficult internet access, and later had loud neighbors (the first ones of the trip-- two down from us were out-of-country-ers and were playing annoyingly loud music, and right next to us a big family with loud rough-housy kids), although we had a pretty nice spot right at the end among Eucalyptus-like trees. The most amazing part of that site we found that night after dinner, when we decided to walk to the end of the road. We thought that was going to just be hundred or so meters, and it was, but after the road ended there was a trail between fenced paddocks (one with sheep the other with horses) that went up a hill. We then decided to just go to the top of the first hill, because it looked pretty, but after four more "just at the top of that hill" spots we got to the highest point of the trail. From there we could see all the way to either side of the peninsula. It was gorgeous. On the way down I convinced my 'rents to stop at a swing we saw on the way up. It was on the other side of the sheep fence, hung 45 feet in the air from a giant knotty tree. Sheep baaed in annoyance at us waking them up as M and I climbed over the fence. It was very hard to get on the swing at first, but once I figured out which tree root to stand on the hop on it was amazingly fun. The scenery was gorgeous and the swing swung far into the air. After a minute or so, some dogs started barking from the house at the bottom of the hill that was connected to the paddock we were in, which was our queue to leave. I was considering what I'd say when the people who lived in the house came out to find us tresspassers ("I hope that's okay.. It was so much fun and beautiful, I didn't think it would be too much of a problem..."). We walked back down the hill, and saw the two dogs barking at us at the bottom of it. On our way in we had seen an adorable sign made by little kids that said "this is the home of two friendly dogs and a friendly family," which gave us hope that one, the people wouldn't prosecute us for trespassing and two, the dogs wouldn't eat us alive. It turned out that when we walked down there talking to the dogs in that weird high-pitched oogly voice people use to talk to pets and babies that the dogs were very nice. Right when M came up to them, one rolled on her back asking for a belly rub. We pet them for a little bit, then went back to our camper.

The next day, after going back to the swing once more, we drove into Dunedin. There, we spent 20 stressful minutes finding parking, then walked around the downtown area. There was a giant chess set in the main square (well, it's actually an octagon), which D and I played at for a little bit. We ran out of time before we could finish, but he was about to win. I haven't been good at chess since first grade, and he has been good at chess since high school. It was funny because tourists would walk by, stop to watch for a little bit or just long enough to take a picture. I felt like a tourist attraction.
Next we moved the car so we wouldn't get a ticket, then set out walking again. We were headed towards the University of Otago, and on the way stopped for lunch at a Turkish kebab place. It was so good-- I learned to love Turkish street food when we were in Australia seven years ago, because there was an amazing kebab place across the street from our apartment. After eating we got to the university, which had a gorgeous campus, walked around a little, then headed back to the car.
We drove out of Dunedin north towards Christchurch, stopping on a beach to see natural spherical boulders lined up in the surf. The joke theory of their existence is that they are prehistoric alien eggs, which pretty much describes how they look. It was very nice to walk along a soft, warm beach and take a break from driving. After a couple more hours we got to Oamaru, where we wanted to stay next.

The motor park was okay. It was big, but we got a pretty nice spot in the shade by the edge. One annoying and tragic thing is that they finally had a trampoline, but it had 8 padlocks lining up the mesh door because of a rip in the trampoline. Well, at least I got a little closer.
That night, we had a booking to see little blue penguins down by the beach. Before the actual penguin viewing, we were on a small (the three of us were half of it) tour showing how the colony worked. People had build small wooden boxes perfect for penguin-nesting, and we got to look into them and see little chicks waiting for their parents with food to come home. They were adorable, our group was very sweet, and our tour guide friendly. After that we joined 100 other people (mostly Asian tour bus tourists) to sit in stands made for viewing the penguins and waited for darkness. About an hour later, penguins started to climb out of the water and work their way up the ramp to their box-houses. They were so adorable-- less than a foot tall with blue feathers on their backs. We left after most of them had come onto land, drove back to the site and went to bed (by then it was WAY past when we had been going to sleep recently).

The next day we drove up to Christchurch. It was extremely stressful in the car, because there were no trees to provide shade, my arms were sunburned from the previous day, and we were all overheated. Finally we found a shady spot to pull over and have lunch, which turned out to be very pleasant. A couple hours later we got into Christchurch. We got lost on our way to the holiday park (which is actually in a suburb of Christchurch), and had to stop and ask in a giant liquor store for directions. Eventually, though, we got here. Getting plugged into our site was also a challenge, because the first couple plugs we tried kept tripping the circuit. All this time a woman who lives in her trailer here right next to our spot was trying to help us. This park is very bizarre-- most of the sites are occupied by trailers that serve as people's housing. The woman next to us is very interesting, first coming from the Czech Republic but moving here for personal freedom. She is very opinionated and wonderful, in a lonely-but-free kind of way. She has two pet chickens, a motor bike, a normal bike (which she rides hundreds of miles a day when she's not working, such as now), a car, and her trailer. It's interesting, because she seems to have such a different outlook on life than I do-- we agree to some extent on some things like money and pollution, but she has decided that she can't do anything for the world. She likes living here, just going about her life, working sometimes with menial jobs and sometimes not (she used to be a counselor back in the Czech Republic, but now has jobs like delivery). Maybe it's just my upper-middle-class upbringing, or IHS's you-can-change-the-world-vibe, but I've always been told and believe that I can do anything I want in life (which she definitely agrees with), and part of that is I could really change something and have an impact on the world. That's something that seems looked up upon in my family, school, and culture, but something she has decided is not important in her life, something she doesn't want. She seems perfectly happy going about her simple life. She's very sweet and talkative.
Later that afternoon we went on a goose chase looking for a grocery store, that the woman next door gave us walking directed to. It was a very weird walk, first going on street, then on a weird empty path by a little stream. To get to the grocery store we had to go through an opening in a fence and through the back of a giant Mitre 10 (kind of like Home Depot), and walk across parking lots to get to the grocery store. The store itself was bizarre-- it was giant, and felt like an IKEA of grocery stores because of the long industrial isles and people hired to smile while they were packing up your not-so-fresh white fish. Eventually we bought some supplies for dinner (venison burgers, which turned out to be very good) and walked back to our camper.
Once we got back M and I took a swim in the small, unheated pool here. It was cold but fun, especially when I tried to go down the small slide at the end build for 7-year-olds. I couldn't sit down all the way on the slide because it was so small, and I was so scared I would fall off and break my bones that I tried to slowly lower myself down it. Half way down the slide, though, I lost my grip, and went swooping into the water with a shriek. It turned out to be pretty fun.

I slept well with the windows open and a breeze coming through, and now am sitting at the wobbly table trying to avoid being dragged away to do dishes. We're leaving for Australia today, which I am excited for. I think I like NZ overall better than Australia, but I'm ready to go over there for a month. I think we're going to get so bored of Aussie though, after living on a beach house on a not-very-populated island for three weeks. Well, hopefully I won't get too burnt.

It's going to be hot in Brisbane, where we're staying with friends next. Oh well, I guess that is one of the reasons we came down here. Y'all get the annoying endless Eugene not-quite-spring-but-not-winter-anymore months when the world is taunting you with early bulbs but too cold and dreary for shorts, while I get summer and the beginning of fall when we come back to Christchurch.

I should pack. My clothes have all migrated out of my suitcase under the table bench, and without any room to pack it's going to be difficult to find every last sock.

I'll post next in Brisbane, where hopefully I will have fast enough internet to post some of my 1436 pictures. Bye.