My, my we have some catching up to do. It seems like an age since I was talking about boobies. So much to write about. Especially as a day here feels like five normal days packed into one.
Mount Cook Village was absolutely wonderful, mainly for the Hooker Lake Walk we did early evening. We tramped along stunning grey rivers, over Indiana Jones style rope bridges (well, technically I suppose they were actually properly designed suspension bridges made of iron or steel or whatever important save your life looking bridges are made of) and along bushy tracks to finally hit a lake of glaciers overlooked by the imposing and beautiful Mount Cook itself. Took several photos of Will standing on a rock looking like an Antarctic explorer.
The following day we drove further south through more of that beautiful NZ scenery (blah, blah… – it’s all just so normal now) to Dunedin. We decided to freedom camp for the night to save money, and so in order to pass the time until dark (less conspicuous finding somewhere to park up that way – we’ve learnt all the tricks!) we headed to the cinema and paid an astounding 32 dollars (which with our sorry exchange rate is about 18 of our measly pounds) to see Invictus. Which was actually well worth it. Wonderful film about Nelson Mandela’s support of rugby to bring white and black together in post-Apartheid South Africa. Finally a film about sport worth seeing*. Whilst trying to find somewhere to freedom camp we narrowly avoided some sort of gang party at the top of the highest hill in Dunedin, and also accidentally drove up the steepest residential street in the world (Samson the van was not best pleased with us). Finally found a spot to park up a little way out of town next to a miniature dam, and the SH1 (but we only heard the lorries, not the cars, so it was passable as a sleeping point. And to be frank, when you’re a gipsy anywhere is good so long as it’s free).
After scouring every single second hand bookshop in Dunedin (which is quite a few) we grabbed an amazing takeway sushi lunch for a beautiful 5 dollaroonies and hit the road. Drove south past Brighton – obviously had to stop to take photos of this Brighton (just as beautiful as our beloved back home, and with more sand…) before parking up the van for a long lunch and a sunbathe on the beach. Finally managed to topless sunbathe. The massive long beach stretched forever, but with not another person in sight I felt it was about time I let loose and support Shannon Claire wholeheartedly. After a spot of skinny dipping (well, we had to – such a beautiful beach, with no-one else around) where Will was also able to get in on the act we hit the road again in the gypsymobile.
Stopped at Nugget Point, which is apparently a wonderful place to spot the rarest of penguins in the whole wide world – the yellow-eyed variety. We came very, very close to making the breed a whole lot rarer. As we drove up the hill we chatted about how unlikely it would be to see said penguin, especially since it was not very late in the day*. And then, out of nowhere, as we wound round the bend, a little cheeky penguin fella shuffled out in front of us across the road. Literally 3 metres in front of Samson. We literally could have killed the little chappy. How terrible that would have been. Being responsible for killing off one of only 4,000 known yellow-eyed penguins in the world. What would we have done? We figured afterwards that if we had knocked him over we would have had to have bundled him in the back of the van and hidden the evidence, being too ashamed to go to the authorities about our hit and run incident. Maybe eaten a penguin burger or two for dinner. Thank goodness the little chap got away.
* Surf’s Up is also brilliant of course.
* In Jan/Feb, best time to view the yellow-eyed penguin is after 4pm, and the later the better…
Oops
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