We had hoped for a nice lie-in this morning, but the wind was already blowing at full force again early on.
We are heading north towards Christchurch. The wind was extremely strong during the first part of the journey, and at times the campervan was literally pushed sideways. After about 100 kilometres the wind began to ease, although it was occasionally replaced by some pretty heavy rain showers.
When we reached the Moeraki Boulders, we saw the remarkable, almost perfectly round stones scattered across Koekohe Beach on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. These enormous boulders formed on the seabed around 60 million years ago, as minerals slowly accumulated around a core in the sediment. Coastal erosion is gradually exposing them today. Some are more than two metres in diameter and weigh several tonnes. A few have striking cracks, sometimes containing yellow calcite crystals. According to a Māori legend, they are petrified food baskets and gourds from a canoe that was wrecked centuries ago.
From there it was only another half-hour’s drive to our campsite in Oamaru. We had read that you could watch the little blue penguins coming ashore there. But it turned out that the whole area was fenced off, and you could buy a ticket for €50 to watch the penguins walk past on their way to their nests for the night. What bothered me most was that, as I understood it, a large proportion of the proceeds goes towards promoting tourism rather than protecting the penguins. By the time we had walked over there, we could already hear amplified sound, and that was enough for us.
A funny little story: when we arrived, we saw a pier covered with what we thought were penguins. I hadn’t brought my camera because I assumed we wouldn’t get to see any. So I rushed back to the campervan like an idiot to fetch it. When I finally had a proper look, they turned out to be birds that looked an awful lot like penguins! 🙂
