Day 52

Early wake up that day, we left Esther sleeping in and drove to Oarmaru public gardens for breakfast. After cleaning up and body wash (for me), we walked around the pretty garden. It was sunny and warm. We saw birds and played a little Pokemon before going to countdown. We bet a muffin on a couple nationality and went to the warehouse to look at phones and weights. Sadly, no more 2kg dumbbells weights left and Jack had to reset a phone to look at it as no one knew the PIN code. In the end he didn’t got this phone, still having troubles to get his since 6 months. Previous to our shopping, we went to the library to download wikicamp app. We met Esther at the car park and had a long walk up hill to… a closed fish and chips chop… we finally got lunch at the only shop selling chips not far from the town centre. Esther stayed around to use the wifi while we went to Steampunk HQ.

At the entrance the tenant nicely gave us $2 to fire the locomotive out the front. Pretty cool we went for the experience and got quite impressed. It was spooky and fun, lots of crazy sculptures, sounds and machines. The best was “the portal,” a light experience with peaceful music in a room full of mirrors. We also went to the playground at friendly bay where everything was made from the Steampunk factory. The slide and the flying fox were crazy! They even had the hamster wheel but for adults. We filled up our bottles and went next to the blue penguin colony. Of course it wasn’t free and we had to book a tour so we just walked on the jetty where sea lions were lying on. There was also a big colony of shags and white and black sea birds.

We met Esther after checking the I-site. She went to see the penguins while we tried to find the skyline walkway at the King George Park near the penguin lookout. This walk lead past old battlement stations which Jack thoroughly explored. There were also some brightly coloured Paua shells on the beach which we collected for Esther. Back in Oamaru we did a quick shop and got fuel before heading to the camp for the night. We went to a free site over the Waitaki River, checking with a friendly Irishmen doing yoga that we were in the right place. We had time to spare so I did some exercises before bed. Lastly we played some card games with a deck jack had brought from a $2 shop.

Entree Written By Marianne and Jack