Now it’s mostly a long drive and ferry crossing to get back to Auckland and home.
Saturday, 27 October: Dunedin to Amberley.
Only one sight-seeing stop today at Moeraki Boulders, about an hour north of Dunedin. There are dozens of spherical boulders (actually concretions – the dictionary word of the day) as singles or in large groupings.
Sunday, 28 October: Amberley to Picton.
No sightseeing stops on the way. We stopped for lunch in Blenheim at Saveur Cafe where we had stopped when out on one of our bike rides the first time we were here. As before, a very nice meal, but getting a server to come back to see if you wanted coffee and dessert required some strategy – the first time they never came, and today they only came when we stacked our meal plates on the side of the table so that it was really obvious that we had finished our “mains”.
Arrived in Picton in time for Jeannie to watch the Sox come back from a 4-0 deficit in game 4 of the World Series. We were able to watch the end of the 7-hour game yesterday that didn’t finish until after 3 in the morning on the East Coast since that was only 8PM in New Zealand. However the way that we can “watch” games here is by hitting refresh on the MLB GameDay app – it is actually not possible to get the MLB streaming package in New Zealand – we (or I should say Jeannie) checked.
We did a stroll around town after the game to calm Jeannie down after Kimbrel made the game interesting again in the bottom of the 9th.
We had time for lunch and another stroll in Picton before the ferry so we took advantage of that to enjoy what may be our final Real Fruit ice cream under a palm tree
Monday, 29 October: Ferry to Wellington.
There are two companies that run ferries across the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands. We took a Bluebridge ferry on the way south and an Interislander ferry on the way north. Each company has three huge ferries that carry passengers, autos, trucks and rail cars. The crossing takes 3 1/2 hours and it takes about 30 minutes to load and another 30 to unload. We were among the earliest cars to be loaded. It turned out that we were the last car to be loaded on the uppermost auto level. When we went back for unloading we discovered that this meant that we were the last car off the ferry.
The journey was much smoother than the one we had going south – the seas were rated a 2 (1-2 meter swells) as opposed to a 3 (2-4 meter swells) on the way south. It was a very exciting trip for Jeannie because she got to “watch” the Red Sox win the World Series.
It was overcast when we left Picton, but we ran into driving rain as we got close to Wellington, and we drove in the rain to our hotel. This is a view looking back at the Marlborough hills which surround the many arms of Queen Charlotte Sound.
This ferry has to make a couple of 90-degree turns at the end of the channel which exits the sounds before heading across Cook Strait. The views of the headlands with the lighthouse brought many passengers out on deck.
While on the passenger deck you can also get a view down to the truck and camper van decks. There were six double-length stock trucks on board. If you look closely at the green truck you can see that there are two layers of sheep in each trailer.
Tuesday, 30 October: Wellington to Waitomo
This was just a long day of driving. Some nice scenery along the way and only a few sections of winding and twisty roads. When we arrived at the hotel we discovered that there had been an earthquake which was felt across much of the south part of the North Island. It was 6.2 on the Richter scale and it was centered near Taumarunui. Wait! Didn’t we drive through Taumarunui? Yes, we did. And it must have been very close to the time that the quake hit. The 6-o’clock news explained. The quake was very deep and so it was felt on the further edges of the plates that were moving – along the east and south coasts of the island. The news showed the Speaker of the House suggesting that Parliament adjourn until they are given the “all clear” as they are all shaking about. No damage or injuries, so “No worries!”.
I think that they cover plate techtonics in elementary school here – everyone generally knows how many fault lines there are within 100 kilometers of their residence and how they interact, etc.
Wednesday, 31 October: Waitomo to Auckland
Waitomo is home to Waitomo Caves and a number of adventure activities like tubing through the caves and whitewater kayaking. We were definitely not going to do any of the adventure activities, but we had yet to decide whether or not to do a cave tour. There are three separate caves with tours, some involving a boat ride as well as a walk. There are also glowworms in the caves. We went to breakfast, still undecided about caving.
(An aside: a really great thing to watch in the restaurant where we were eating were the sparrows who had learned how to open the automated doors by flying in front of the camera so that they could pick up any crumbs next to tables or land on a table after the customers left but before it was cleared. We tried to get a video of this, but didn’t succeed.)
We finally opted to skip the caves and do a local walk. We drove down a narrow lane with a lot of speed bumps to get to the car park where the walk started. It began with a swinging bridge which was rated “only one person at a time” and then immediately turned into a muddy track with some steps that looked like they might give way at any time.
So we regrouped and decided to do a different walk back near the caves. While there had been a bunch of dithering and backtracking to get there, this turned out to be a great decision. The walk had quite a few stairs and climbs and a few places where you squeezed between or through large rocks, but we could see much of what the three caves that charge admission are like, and we encountered one of the groups that ride tubes through the water in the caves.
Thursday, 1 November: Auckland
Returned the bicycles (with about 525 Km of travel) and the car (with just under 8000 Km of travel), packed our bags and braced ourselves for 18 hours of flying, with a 6-hour layover in LA and somehow arriving in Boston where the time will only be a few hours later than when we departed Auckland.