Road Trip (part 4)
I was enjoying the freedom of having a car in New Zealand so much that I decided rather than return my free rental car, I would pay to have it for a few extra days. In driving down the beautiful west coast of the South Island I hadn’t seen anything of the east, and Dunedin offered not only a view of the missed coast but also some wildlife I was excited to see. The drive was exceptionally foggy at times, making the mountains wonderfully mysterious but also forcing me to drive very slowly as it was sometimes hard to see anything in front of me. Once through the fog I passed through some very sweet towns including a coffee stop at a lovely cafe in Roxburgh and fish and chips (I had the elephant fish, apparently a kind of shark) by the lake in Waihola, the mountains slowly giving way to the more agricultural land of the east coast.
I arrived at OPERA, a wildlife sanctuary and one of the only places you can find Hoi Ho, rare yellow-eyed penguins, in time for their twilight tour. As the sun starts to descend, the penguins make their way back to land from feeding out at sea, and from afar we saw two (we were lucky apparently - they’re that rare) waddle sweetly across the beach and back to the seclusion of their homes for the evening. The next day I headed to the Royal Albatross Centre, and as it was world albatross day we received a free tour of the facilities and a chance to see the albatrosses from the lookout. We saw chicks being fed, and right as we left got to see one in flight. They really are huge. On my way back to I stopped at Sandfly Bay where I had been told I might see some sea lions. There were a few sleeping in different spots when I arrived. It was good to see them, but they weren’t particularly animated. I felt very lucky when one more sea lion slowly made its way out of the sea, and bit by bit along the beach before falling asleep near me in the grasses on the other side.
After leaving Dunedin I drove to Wanaka to see the cute skiing town for one night. After a walk along pretty Glendhu Bay, a look at the famous lone Wanaka tree and the Matariki (Maori new year) celebration in the centre of town I checked in to my hostel and soon ended up out for the night with people I’d met there. We drank local beers and danced with the others in the bar. The next morning I drove to Queenstown airport, and with a heavy heart finally dropped off the car that had taken me the length of the country. The road trip was sadly over. But luckily I had more excitement already booked in Queenstown.