Thursday, July 28
Today was going to be another long driving day. We were headed from Oamaru which is on the
East side of the island to Te Anau which is on the West side of the island, and
you basically have to travel around the Southern part of the island instead of
going across. I originally had several
stops planned out along the way, one being the Nugget Island Lighthouse, but
after looking it over with Mason we decided to save the extra 2.5 hours it
would take us and skip that spot. We’d
heard it’s mostly great early morning or late at night and we wouldn’t be
hitting it at that time of day.
The town of Oamaru was very interesting to us.
They had many Victorian buildings that were
built in the 19th century out of local limestone.
The “downtown” area easily could have been
used for a movie set and the buildings were just pretty.
Theo liked seeing the Opera House the night
before because they had changing lights flashing up on the building.
Mason was curious about the Steampunk that
was located in the town.
We weren’t sure
if the kids would be that into the Steampunk HQ Museum so we decided to drop
Mason off while the kids and I would go get some groceries and then we’d meet
up near a Steampunk park along the Harbour.
This ended up working out really well since the kids got some playtime
at a fun Steampunk inspired park and Mason got to take some cool photos at the
Museum.
We ended up heading on our way around 11:30
or a little later and our first road stop was
the Moeraki Boulders, about 40 minutes South of Oamaru.
The large boulders are a short 10 minute walk
along the beach and look like giant turtle eggs.
We got there when the tide was a little bit
high, so we couldn’t climb much on the boulders, but they were still cool to
see and the beach had the perfect atmosphere because it was overcast this
morning.
The boulders were formed
millions of years ago on the sea floor by a layering process.
The seabed was uplifted to form coastal
cliffs that have eroded over time causing the boulders to tumble down to the
beach.
Woodrow found a stick his size
while we were on the beach and that entertained him almost the whole time we
were out there, and I was fascinated with the beautiful and large shells that
were washed up on the shore (I may have taken some home as souvenirs).
After that stop we planned to push on through to Te Anau,
about 5 more hours away.
Nothing too
eventful on this drive and we ended up getting to our hotel around 8pm.
We stayed at Radfords on the Lake and the
accommodations were very nice.
The owner
who checked us in was super friendly and she could have chatted with us all
night.
Te Anau is right between the
Fiordlands National Park and Milford Sound which are both supposed to be
beautiful locations.
Originally we were
planning on doing a boat tour through Milford Sound but a few days prior when I
went to look at ticket prices again the weather was suggesting that the one
road leading from Te Anau through Milford Sound had been closed due to high
snow and avalanche activity and the weather was looking rainy.
We decided we’d skip the boat tour, or book
it the day of because we didn’t want to try and figure out reimbursements if we
weren’t able to get to the Sound.
We
headed to sleep with the plan that we’d see how things were looking in the
morning and explore along the Milford Sound road as far as we could.
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