Oamaru

From Dunedin, after the chocolate factory tour, we had another beautiful drive and ended up in Oamaru, where we purported to see some very rare yellow-eyed penguins, because that’s kind of what you do in Oamaru. On the way up we stopped at the Moeraki boulders and had a delicious lunch of sundried tomatoes and feta and pita bread on the beach, feeling a very specific and simple kind of happiness: good weather, good food, good company, and just being on vacation, looking at amazing geological wonders and enjoying the general awesomeness of life. And then, of course, it was time to take pictures of ourselves climbing all over these amazing geological wonders. That’s the beauty of much New Zealand tourism—at least much of that that I’ve participated in, and keeping in mind I have neither bungy jumped nor zorbed nor done any other xxxxtreme adventure stuff—you can just pull over to the side of the road and see some pretty fantastic stuff.

As we have only a tentative grasp on geology and plate tectonic theory, we thought at first that the boulders were, like, congealed bits of lava or something. Apparently they’re either food baskets that washed up from a canoe capsized hundreds of years ago, or possibly some sort of lime crystal concretions. Whatever. I think it’s intuitively obvious to the casual observer what these things really are: alien egg pods on the verge of hatching out aaaaaany minute now.

After making it to Oamaru and getting all excited when we saw a sign in the parking lot that admonished us to look out for penguins because “they sometimes like to play under the cars,” we went off to another wildlife hide and strained our eyes looking for little flippy seabirds coming up out of the water, to no avail, for the second night in a row. We were a little disappointed—penguin viewing was becoming something of a quest by this point–but not as much as you’d think because it was so still and peaceful up on the cliffs and we could see all the seabirds flying home for the night. We spent a long time sitting quietly watching the long slow waves roll in in the twilight and thinking about how the landscape here works on you. It’s not particularly flashy but it’s sneaky: it gets into you and you can’t stop looking at it, you can’t stop seeing yourself in its midst, can’t stop thinking about staying.

The next day we had to decide whether to go back up to Christchurch, where we’d both already been, to transact some business Lyds had to take care of, or whether to head along the Southern Scenic Route to the Catlins and back up to Queenstown through Invercargill. The pursuit of awesomeness won out, as it does not quite often enough in my opinion, over the pursuit of business, and so, telling ourselves that we’d turn back the minute the roads got too snowy or scary or whatever, we headed back down south.

On the way back to Dunedin we noticed a little cheese factory, also by the side of the road. Sucker as I am for anything describing itself as artisanal, I yelled “Pull over, pull over!” and Lydia obliged my desire for some excellent dairy products, with which New Zealand in general is pleasingly rife.

There was no one really there except us, as it’s the middle of winter and there aren’t many tourists around, as they seem to have the good sense, unlike us, to stay home by the space heater instead of venturing out to the beaches wearing multiple layers of polarfleece. We chatted for a while with the very friendly cheesemonger, who was showing me a lovely blue and a very interesting Brie-style, and he said we should come back in the summer. “From your mouth to God’s ears,” I said, thinking about my job and visa situation. “I’ll take you kayaking,” he said with a smile, writing something down on one of the factory’s brochures. I thought he had, like, a kayak tour company or something and said that it seemed like it would be a nice place in the summer, and bought some cheese for lunch and said goodbye. Only as we were walking out to the car did I see what Lydia had been giggling about: dude had given me his NUMBER. While he was selling me CHEESE.

“Text him! Text him!” she said, as we got back on the road and munched on the delicious Cheddar we’d just procured, along with the digits, AW YEAH. “Go on! Text him!”

“No! Why? I don’t…he just…what? No! Shut up! Forget it! It’s just because I appreciate cheese! It doesn’t mean anything!”

But…well, I am easily amenable to suggestion, it turns out, and we had a long drive ahead of us, and I was very flattered by the whole thing, so, long story short, I did text him, and he responded right away and told me I seemed very interesting and that he’d like to converse more. Shave me bald and call me drafty, people: flirty texts with the cheese dude, can you feature it? Me neither. I love vacation.

With such distractions the kilometers just flew by and the scenery got wilder and more beautiful. We were still seeing lots of sheep and about a hundred more hawks flying right overhead, and passing through more native-ish bush. A lot of the cool things on the Scenic Southern Route were closed because of the snow and the road conditions but we were, thankfully, able to get out to Nugget Point.

We were heading back down the road when Lydia said she needed to use the long-drop toilet at Roaring Bay. I was standing guard at the unlockable door when I noticed a little sign that said “Wildlife Viewing Hide—Penguins.” It was just about the right time to see them, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but…”Girl!” I yelled through the unlockable door. “Penguins! Let’s try one more time!” Lydia, with her super-sharp bionic eyes, actually saw a penguin emerging from the surf while we were still going down the rocky mountain path, and you best believe we just ran to that wildlife viewing hide.

Isn’t it so amazing that a flightless waterbird has to, after a hard day making a living out at sea, climb a mountain to get home every night? We saw six penguins all told and numbered them forthwith, choosing not to anthropomorphize them with names. We did, however, choose to imagine aloud, in richly rendered detail, the home lives of Numbers One Through Six, as they hopped and waddled up the cliff.

“Do you think Number Two is actually waiting for Number Five?”

“That’s not Number Two. Number Two is up there with—duh!—Number One. Up there on the front porch, see, taking in the cool evening air.”

“Then who’s that down there with its arms outstretched and kind of bobbing up and down?”

“Number Four. Number Five hasn’t even gotten it together to get out of the water yet. Hurry up, Number Five! Kettle’s on! Come on home!”

There were some other people there, to be sure, and on the way out we did run into a tour bus of Texans, but we were pleasantly surprised at how low-key the whole thing was. We’d had no idea that it was a penguin beach and would have never stopped if not for the long-drop toilet with the unlockable door—Lydia said that anywhere else there would be walls announcers and ticket charges. I liked it our way much better.

After all this excitement, between the cheese factory and the penguins, we were pretty tired, so after texting our bird enthusiast friend Duncan back in Welly that we’d seen two percent of the world’s yellow-eyed penguin population, finally we found a hostel in the tiny freezing cold town of Owaka and called it a night—after, of course, admiring some pukeko tiles in the kitchen and doing a little thermal yoga to keep flexible for the upcoming hafla.