South Island week one

March 31 we headed out of Wellington on the ferry. Alan P. was kind enough to drive us to the terminal at 7:15 am, which apparently is also part of the Kiwi farewelling tradition. We took the train to Christchurch, which was a lovely way to travel there. We went through hilly farm country at first and then past a big salt flat where they make a lot of the NZ salt. Mostly the train goes right along the coast, and we occasionally saw seals. The Kaikoura mountains come down close to the sea. These are the mountains we had been surprised to see the year before from the south coast near Wellington. No snow on them yet. Then the train headed back inland and we went through the dry and California-like Canterbury plains.

We picked up our camper van the next morning and headed down the coast to Oamaru, which turned out to be a great place. The camp ground was very nice, and right next to the city park and an easy walk into town. We decided to book the penguin tour that left from the campground around 6:30 pm, and it turned out to be really good value. The bus went through town with the driver explaining about a lot of the buildings. Oamaru was a very prosperous early town and has a very nice cream-colored limestone that is quarried nearby. Since trees are very scarce, most of the old town is therefore built in stone, which they decorated with lots of Corinthian pillars and such like. Eventually the economy faltered, shipping went elsewhere, and the buildings just sat there until the town started to remake itself as a tourist center.

The next stop on the tour was a colony of yellow eyed penguins, so called because of yellow feathers in a band around their heads. They are quite rare, but this group was quite comfortable, practically underfoot along the viewing platforms. They build nests in burrows high up the cliffs to avoid sea lions. The chicks have left the nest now and the adults are entering their moulting season when they lose all their feathers and have to stay on land for a month.

Then the bus took us around to the blue penguin center. These are the smallest type of penguin, sometimes called fairy penguins. Oamaru has built up a big nesting site for them in an old quarry right off the ocean, building them nesting box burrows, which they really like. The colony can number two hundred. There is a big grandstand where all the tourists get to sit at sunset, and the beach is lit with orange lights. As far as the penguins are concerned, we can see them but they cannot see us. At first small groups, called a raft, came ashore, and then eventually a group of about twenty. Each group would hesitate as it came to the top of the ramp and had to cross an open area to get to the nesting area. Finally one or two would venture across and then the whole group would rush over, since nobody wanted to be last either. Meanwhile, the rangers are telling us all about the penguins and the work that is being done there with them to increase their numbers. I don't know of any other locale doing such a good job of helping the penguins and making them accessible to people. We couldn't take photos there as flashbulbs seriously freak them out, but we could photograph the yellow penguins, because they come to their burrows earlier in the evening.

The next day we took some of the walking tours of Oamaru. Its other claim to fame is as a childhood dwelling place for Janet Frame, and we got to see her house, and had a good conversation with the docent there. Frame lived there during the thirties and early forties, so she is a slightly later generation than Katherine Mansfield. She was nominated for, but did not receive, a Nobel prize. I mostly know of her from a Jane Campion film version of her autobiography called "An Angel at My Table". A lot of her other writings relate to her childhood in Oamaru. The house did a good job of relating the work to the place, much like Katherine Mansfield's birth house in Wellington.

The next day, as we drove down the coast, we stopped at a bizarre and perhaps unique Kiwi icon, the Moeraki rocks. These are a collection of round, meter-wide boulders in the surf which are apparently (via Wikipedia) accretions around calcite crystals in the mudstone, sort of like mud pearls. I found the most interesting ones to be the ones that had split open along veins, called septeria, of purer calcite. The morning fog added its own mystery to the setting.

We arrived in Dunedin about noon, and walked the 2 kilometers from the campground into town after lunch. The center of Dunedin is an octagon shaped park with a statue of Robert Burns occupying a prominent position. His great-nephew Thomas Burns was the first Presbyterian clergyman in town. We took a historic walking tour around town, with a major stop at the Otago Settlers Museum. Its most interesting feature was a room filled floor to ceiling with portraits - paintings, drawings, and photos - of early settlers.

Sunday morning we went to Meeting for Worship, and saw several people that we know from their visits to Wellington. In particular, we were pleased to receive an invitation to dinner from Elizabeth T. and Elizabeth D., whom we have had many interesting conversations with. We passed the afternoon in the Otago Museum. I particularly enjoyed the Victorian Attic, which is filled with natural history exhibits - skeletons and stuffed animal and insects. We also enjoyed their butterfly environment - a 3 story tropical rain forest. When we got to the Elizabeths', our most fun activity was that they took us out to a glow worm area they had heard about but never been to either. It was about a ten minute drive and a ten minute walk up a trail along a stream and then we were in an area with steep muddy banks on both sides with lots of glow worms. It was probably a good thing that there had been a good drizzle the night before. The worms, actually the larval stage of an insect, are about the size of a pin and have a blue pin point of light at their rear end. They suspend little ropes of sticky stuff from their bodies and capture and eat insects that are attracted to the light. It had also changed into a clear and starlit night, so there were white points of light peeking through the trees and blue points of light all around. Quite magical.

The next day we drove out onto the Otago Peninsula. Our first stop was the Larnach Castle, built by a rich banker/politician about 1871. He called it "The Camp." It is really a beautifully made building, not too big, about four rooms per floor with a wide glassed-in verandah around the first two floors. The workmanship in wood and plaster around the ceilings and walls are marvelous. There is a high tower above the third floor with a panoramic view. We also enjoyed walking around the extensive gardens. The story of the first owner ends tragically. He had five children, one of whom died around age twenty. His first wife also died fairly young and he married her sister "to be a good mother for the children." After she died, he married a younger French woman. There were then rumors that she and his oldest son were having an affair, and he shot himself at the Pariliament building in Wellington. The Castle stood mostly unused for a long time, and then a young couple bought it in the early Sixties. The wife did a lot of the restoration herself until she could afford to hire help. She stills lives there and her kids run the business.

After the castle, we drove out to the tip end of the peninsula where there is an Albatross Center. We enjoyed the displays there, especially about recent efforts to work with fishermen to limit the inadvertent killing of seabirds during long-line fishing. We were too cheap to pay for the tour out to the nesting sites, so we walked along the public cliffs and did get to see one albatross that was soaring around for a short time.

The next day we drove to Invercargill via the Southern Scenic Route, which goes along the coast through an area called the Catlins. Lots of forest and rugged coast and sheep farms. Rain threatened on and off all day, so we picked our scenic stops based on whether it was actually raining at the time. After a surprisingly nice lunch in Owaka at the Lumberjack Café (shades of Vernonia), our first stop was a short hike to Purokaunui Falls through old forest. The second was a board walk out into an estuary and seeing several new birds (finally saw some Bellbirds) on the walk back. Finally we stopped at Curio Cove where the ocean has exposed a petrified forest. There are several large blown over trees and many stumps. The trees were covered by a large mudslide of volcanic ash 160 million years ago. The tide was out, which made it easy to walk out onto the large mudstone ledge. The waves were very big, crashing onto the rocks and making large clumps of kelp sway most enticingly in the coves.

Thus ends our first week on the South Island. It turned very cold (overnight lows in the thirties) towards the end of the week with occasional rain, but none the less we saw lots of good stuff. We love our camper van, especially with the extra duvet and hot water bottle that we were sensible enough to order for this fall camping. More to come!