lindreth upside down: Holiday 2011, part deux

For the first leg of our holiday, we drove from Christchurch down to Moeraki.

We were keen to see the Moeraki Boulders, these big round rocks on the beach. But we were a little annoyed to arrive there and see that someone had bought the land in front of the beached rocks. These entrepreneurs installed an ugly gift shop / cafe along with a wooden walkway to the beach. Then to be really tacky, they put out a collection box charging tourists $2 to use the walkway to go see the boulders. Because we thought this was annoying, and also because we didn't have any change, we used the walkway without paying (yeah, we're pretty badass). We slyly walked past the collection box and down to the beach.

The rocks are kind of big and round and pretty in their own way. But frankly, it wasn't that great. The photos we had seen made it look like the beach was just covered in them, but really it's a huge empty beach with only a few boulders. The photos were cooler than the real thing. Kind of a disappointment, but still worth seeing ... especially if you don't pay the $2.

By the way, we saw on our walk back that there is actually a free pathway to the boulders maintained by DOC, and DOC's track is way better as it has informative signs on it which explain how the boulders came to be there. But of course the entrepreneurs didn't signpost THAT walkway... you get to it from behind the gift shop.

Near Moeraki is Katiki Point, which has a lighthouse and a penguin colony. We headed over there to check them out.

The yellow-eyed penguin is endangered. At Katiki Point, there's a hide where they come to nest. There's a little walkway from the car park toward the sea, and you can walk along there and see penguins just on the other side of the fence!

Not taken with a zoom lens

I'm sure that you're not supposed to be this close to these adorable penguins, but the walkway is fenced on both sides and this penguin was right next to the fence. There's really no where to go to keep a respectful distance, except back to the car park I suppose. I quietly snapped a photo (no flash!) and moved on.

I think I've mentioned in past posts that we used to enjoy camping in the wilderness. We wanted to do some of that kind of camping, so we planned to spend our first night in Trotters Gorge at a DOC campsite. In hindsight, this was perhaps not the best choice we made during our holiday. Trotters Gorge is just a clearing in the bush with a muddy road running through it. There is a toilet and a sink with cold water in a dark hut up a little hill (no electricity). This would have been fine for just the 2 of us, but we've got a baby now and we have to take him with us....

Still, Trotters Gorge might have been okay if it weren't soaking wet the whole time we were there. It was just a wet, muddy mess.

That's our big blue tent - 2 rooms! It's pretty sweet. But even our awesome tent did not make conditions at Trotters Gorge bearable. Note that I took this photo the morning we were leaving: the sun finally came out after 2 nights of rain.

Despite the muddy conditions, we managed to get out and enjoy a walk through the bush.