This part of the road trip proved to be a series of abbreviations and dissapointments. On our way out of Dunedin, heading for Oamaru, we sere going to make a detour to the Otago Peninsula, which was supposed to be very pretty and harbour a albatross and yellow-eyed penguin colony as well as the Larnach Castle.
We drove to the peninsula, making a mental note to gas up somewhere along the way. The drive was indeed very pretty, and our first stop was Larnach castle. We figured the entrance fee would be $10 to $15 each, and we were okay with that. We were not okay, however, with the $25 admission fee that we discovered upon arriving at the gate. I'm sure the castle is cool and interesting and all that, but it isn't worth a total of $50 for us to walk around it for an hour. Besides, I suspect that it is similar to Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria, BC, which Glen and I have visited before. Both castles were built around the same time by similarly melodramatic individuals. Sparkleypoo was hauled into a quick turn and we immediately left.
The drive towards the peak of the peninsula (where the bird are) carried on, but we started to get worried as the gas needle inched further and further down and there was no gas station in sight. When we finally did find a fuel stop in one of the little villages that dot the area, we still managed to come up dry. Quite literally. There was no gas at the gas station. We knew that we still had enough gas to get back to Dunedin, so we turned around and headed back to the city. It would have taken quite a bit more driving to get to the albatross colony; it was still late morning, and as the birds don't come in until the evening and we weren't really interested in them anyway, we decided that we didn't want to waste the gas doubling back and headed off immediately for Oamaru.
Other travellers and kiwis had told us that Oamaru was a sweet little town, and the presence of grand Victorian limestone architecture ensured our interst. We arrived slightly past four in the afternoon...
...and found a ghost town. Seriously, there was hardly anyone in the streets, and all the shops were closed. We walked around and saw their gorgeous white limestone buildings, but for some reason we were both rather dissapointed with the place. The Victorian architecture was pretty nifty, but the rest of the "Victoriana" tourist trappings that filled the place just seemed phony and overdone. We dawdled around a bit and then left. There was a very lovely beach that we passed on the way to town, and as we needed to go back down that road to get onto the highway that would take us to the West Coast, we decided to camp there for the evening. It was a gorgeous little location, and as an added bonus there was a fancy breed rooster wandering around the site, screaming at the top of its lungs and harassing the seaglls.
The drive back through central Otago was just as brown as the first time, but once we hit the mountains around Haast pass, things got gorgeous. It seemed somewhat pointless to stop for the night in Haast itself, so we kept driving north until we came to a nice place to sleep. Along with the clear view of the Tasman Sea (that particular lookout boasted nothing in the water between it and Antartica) came hordes and hordes of sandflies. It was a trend that would continue during the remainder of our time on the coast.
Next time: the rest of the West
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