February 29, 2024

Aoraki to Oamaru

I wake up early before 7 am. I look outside and see nothing but fog. I turn around and want to go back to sleep. Not a chance. All kinds of doors from the 130 plus vehicles on the campground start to open and bang shut again, over and over. At 8 am I crawl out of bed and get dressed. It is quite chilly but I can see that the sun is burning up the fog for another gorgeous day.

We leave around 10 and drive back towards the coast. We make quite a few stops along the way. The first one is at the salmon place where we buy more sashimi and salmon for dinner tonight. A few miles down the road there is a salmon farm where you can actually see how the salmon are being raised. I could not resist to taste some fresh sushi!!

And on we go. Our next stop is at the Clay Cliffs, some stunning rock formations that remind us of the Badlands back home.

The Māori rock paintings are sadly destroyed by the weather and by people. The Elephant Rocks were quite impressive.

Let's not forget our stop at the River T winery in the Waitaki Valley where we find a nice Pinot Griggio which will go well with our fish tonight. The winery was very well kept. Look at all the straight neat rows.

The road back to the coast follows along some beautiful scenery.

Lake Aviemore is a very very long lake which is being damed twice as far as we can observe.

The landscape reminds me of Peru when we we took the train from Cusco to Lake Titicaca. The mountains are bare and dry.

Now we are on our campground where we take a shower, have dinner and get ready to go see the blue penguins.