South Island: Day Three...

Today we rose to a delicious breakfast made by Anita. I got my run in but instead of sea views, I had sheep views. Rolling hills of sheep, backed by mountain ranges.  We headed out and down the east coast of the South Island to Oamaru to view the nesting grounds of blue penguins. We were not allowed to photograph them because they were in their dark nesting burrow and the flash would disturb them. I did get shots of their boxed nests. I found it interesting that the penguins would choose to return year after year with the traffic of all the visitors that come to see them.

We hit the road again to go down to Moeraki to see the Moeraki boulders which are famous for being naturally round. Billy was determined to see them and we went about 45 minutes out of our way to get to them. We parked and walked out onto the beach and as soon as we passed through the shrubs and dunes, the wind whipped so fiercely, we struggled to walk.  Okay, so where are the rocks? About 400meters down the beach. So we hiked and laughed and when we saw that there was parking just above where the boulders were, we voted that Billy would go back for the truck to pick us up! We took pictures with the boulders and picked up some neat shells then headed to the carpark (parking lot)while Billy hiked the beach to the truck. I prepared sandwiches in the boot (trunk) of the truck, so we ate and set off again, bound for Queenstown.

So this day was the day that, in the States, our House Hunters International episode was to finally air. We had hoped that we’d be able to skype Kaigan to watch it that way, as HGTV does not air here. But now we were crossing through the very rural and sparsely populated South Island, which makes eastern Kentucky look like a sprawling metropolis. At show time, we made several attempts to connect with Kaigan but weren’t able to hold a connection for more than a few minutes at a time. When we did have a connection, we could really only hear some of the program and see frozen frames now and then. It’s quite comical when you think about it. Quite remarkable too, really. Here we are, around the other side of the planet, trying , with marginal success, to video call our son in the States! Pulled over on the side of the road, surrounded by the vast expanse of hills and mountains, virtually in the middle of nowhere, we can see real time video of Kaigan in his dorm in Florida! All things considered, NZ has pretty good 3G coverage.

So watching the show was basically a bust but we got to share in some of the excitement via Facebook on Billy’s iPhone.

We reached Queenstown and the Fat Badger for pizza then our next resting place, the bach we'll stay i for the next four night. Quaint little abode facing the lake. We got a chuckle out of the sticker on the shower that read, "conserve water: 3 min shower"! Yeah right!!!