Day 2 The Drive to Dunedin

Lance here.

As noted in the previous post, we spent our first night on our journey through the South Island in a lovely hotel in Christchurch.  Those spacious times were over as I went to our Spaceship rental to pick-up our campervan that would be our means of transportation and shelter for the next 2 weeks.  Just so happens that these Spaceships are essentially your everyday minivans that are janked up to provide for living accommodations on the road.  I was less than impressed with the setup.  Everything in the van looked like it was retrofitted to fit every need, complete with “technology” from the 1950s.

I drove back to the hotel to pick up Midge and SBJ and we were off to gather supplies for our journey.  After a quick stop to Pak 'N Save (NZ’s version of Costco, but not nearly the bulk quantities), we were headed south to Dunedin.

Midge used up her second botanic gardens of the trip when we did a quick detour through the town of Timaru.  I think she was a little disappointed in the result (more like a big park), but on the plus we did get adorable pictures of James trying to eat eucalyptus like a koala.

Midge also got to stop by Oamaru for Whitestone Cheese.  She has a thing for cheese.  Oamaru has a pretty main street with all white stone buildings.

About 2/3s of the way through our drive, we stopped off to visit the Moeraki Boulders.  These things were extremely cool and baffling.  On the middle of a sandy beach there’s just a bunch of smooth spherical boulders with some that have been cracked open, just sitting on the shore.  It was truly an amazing site to behold.

 James really wanted Daddy's sunglasses.

After taking SBJ out for a little stroll, we were feeling hungry.  We made our way to Fleur’sPlace. Maggie and I split their Seafood Special, which was just a plate of 5 different types of fish caught that day.  It was amazing.  The fish had just come off the boats that day and were so fresh that it was hard to share.  Maggie and I had a few sparring matches with our forks to get after the different filets in front of us.

 

 

After dinner it was onto Dunedin, a town mostly known as a historic and college town within NZ.  As the weather was not too great and the drive down to Dunedin from Christchurch being about 4.5 hours without stops, it was getting late and Maggie and I decided to bunk up at the Dunedin Holiday Park after all of the free spots in town were taken for the night.  Apparently, unlike CO they don’t really let people camp out in places that aren’t populated and there are some pretty hefty fines if you don’t abide by the rules.  It would have been nice if they did because some of the facilities at these holiday parks are less than ideal.  Think back to summer camp.  Some very extremely nice, though.

Our first night in the campervan was quite a treat for James.  It was something very new for him and the fact that he was able to be in an enclosed space with his mom and dad and crawl all over the place was extremely exciting.  He was yelling in excitement and crawling in and out of every nook and cranny in the sleeping area of the campervan.  This situation would be a nightmare for him in a few years (a teenager trapped with his parents in a van for 2 weeks...), but it was great that it was enjoyable for him the first night.  It would not always prove to be happy times in the campervan for the rest of the trip though……