From Dunedin, the route was quite enchanting with the most wonderful beaches around just about every corner. It was a drive where you keep stopping to take a photo of another enticing view laid out before you. However, this scenic route was twisty, winding and narrow. So imagine my horror, when I was driving, being confronted on a tight bend by a car with flashing lights and a sign on the roof saying "WIDE LOAD FOLLOWING". I was signalled to stop and pull over to the side of the road. No big deal in many ways but when you are driving something the size of a lorry it is just a little daunting to be directed into a hedge! Then along the road came a truck with a complete house on the back. This was not the first time we had seen this, in fact the other one was a two storey house which had been sawn in half and was on two trucks. The similarity was that they were not new houses but ones which must have been lived in for some time in one place before being moved lock, stock and barrel to another location. Both houses still had the net curtains at the windows and I could see the taste in wallpaper (not good) in this last one. You have to take your hat off to the chaps doing the moving, it was a slick operation and something to behold.
Our first stop after Dunedin was in Moeraki, the prettiest little fishing village I have seen. It was once a busy fishing port but now there are only a few boats which regularly go out. There is a restaurant in the village which has the reputation for being the best fish restaurant in NZ. Had we known about it beforehand we would have booked but without a reservation we could only imagine what we had missed. The campsite was interesting, it was the first time we'd had to park on an uneven pitch and I didn't realise how important it is to be level until I found my feet and legs hanging out of the end of the bed! This could have had something to do with the hospitality of our neighbours who plied John with beer while I had G&T.

After Moeraki, we made our way a little up the coast to 'The Boulders'. These were incredible, it felt like a cross between Stonehenge and Gormley's 'Another Place' where there are the statues of himself set out on Crosby beach. The Boulders are a group of round rocks collected together in one place on the beach, that vary in size from large beach ball to at least 6ft high and 20ft round. Several have split open so you are able to see that inside they are a collection of uneven rocks glued together with quartz and then rolled in something like cement to give a nice smooth coating. They were intriguing and evoked a feeling of wanting to find out how they were formed.

Having followed the coast along through more mouth-watering scenery we then decided to turn inland, heading for Mount Cook. We happened across a shop displaying a notice saying Fossil Museum. Too good to miss, I thought, they will know the answer to boulders and ... well ... it seems they were formed 4 or 5 million years ago on the sea bed. This was just about as much as we got but if you too are interested there is a full explanation on Wikipedia. This small museum was, in fact, quite interesting and the curator took quite a shine to John, I looked around while she gazed at him adoringly and told him every detail of every rock and fossil in the place. John was oblivious to her desires!

We moved on (eventually) and the journey inland took us alongside the oldest man-made lake and dam in NZ. The Waitaki Dam holds back a huge amount of water which is the most unlikely blue colour. It looks as if a huge pot of original Parker coloured ink has been spilt into the water and coloured it. The overspill from the Dam was impressive to watch as torrents of water surged down the spillway casting spray into the air all around - an amazing sight. We then travelled beside the lake to the next dam, Aviemore, which we actually drove across and followed the narrow road along the far side of that lake, through pine forests and by small beaches leading down to this incredibly blue water. At the top of Lake Aviemore we crossed back across the Ben More dam, which in turn holds back the largest man-made lake in NZ. It seems there are, in fact, eight hydro-electric dams on this one river. One of the information centres told us that NZ gets all its power from natural resources and, looking at these dams and the power of the water flowing through, it was easy to see how.

We were keen to visit Mount Cook and had great plans for what to do when we got there, which included the blue lakes and the Tasman Glacier, the largest in the country. Our plans, however, were thwarted by our first day of rain for ages and it just tumbled down. We resorted to just going round the Sir Edmund Hillary exploration centre which was surprisingly interesting. We saw an exhibition of Sir Ed's achievements and then watched a 3D film of Mount Cook, which was so very well done that I feel I really have climbed the mountain. I have to say, though, the best bit of the day was the journey there and back. Despite the bad weather, the views of the snow capped mountains was just magical. Every so often the sun would break through and highlight a peak or a mountainside or a glacier just hanging there and it left you breathless. To say the mountains are majestic sounds a cliche but indeed that is what they are.


We are nearing the end of our time in NZ, just a few more days to go before we leave. The next blog will be the last from NZ, I can't believe it is that time already.