Kia Ora from Oamaru!

This is the furthest south i'll be able to make it as i'm now going back to Methven to see if i can go ballooning tomorrow morning....

Mother Nature is being capricious - but i guess that's her prerogative - and after 2 grey, wet days it has once again dawned bright & sunny.......

One of the balloon pilots with Aoraki Balloons is from Preston, would you believe? Aoraki is the Maori name for what we call Mt Cook......

Anyway, i'm now off to see some blue-eyed penguins....

Oamaru is a fascinating town with some astonishingly fine buildings - it might not qualify for UNESCO World Heritage Site status but it is certainly a town for New Zealand to be proud of. A lot of this is due to a Dunedin architect called Robert Lawson and two Oameru architects - Forrester & Lemon. The city's heyday was from around 1880 until around 1930. A visit to the Criterion Hotel is certainly a must as it has a fine selection of beers - including a couple from Emerson's of Dunedin - which were good.

If you read the blog http://fushnchups.co.nz - you'd get the impression that all Kiwi beers are awful. Certainly the mainstream ones are - all uniformly dull & utterly pointless - such as Tui; Waikato and Speight's Special. They are like John Smith's or Boddington's keg beers - bland & boring. But there are some beers worth searching out - such as Emerson's; Mac's make the excellent Hop Rocker & Brewjolais (hmm); the Gisborne Gold is worth a mention as a clean, malty lager and even Speight's Summit is good. Monteith's beers - despite their claims - i found dull. Anyway - you didn't want to know what i think about Kiwi beers - did you?

Anyway, i mention that as a distraction - of course - as you really wanted to know about the blue-eyed Penguins. Well - they were all at sea, so i didn't see any. I saw lots of Cormorants but that's not very exciting. Near Oameru there's a colony of yellow-eyed Penguins as well - allegedly!

Talking of cars - which we weren't - there are a couple of oddities on sale here you might like to Google: Toyota Raum; Toyota ist; Toyota Levin; Toyota Caldina; Mitsubishi Emeraude and the Nissan Presea. I haven't made any of those up, by the way - but quite why any of them made it into production is a mystery. I went to the car & tractor museum in Geraldine - which was actually very interesting - but they didn't have a Leyland P76, sadly. The people at the desk were very jolly & welcoming - wanting to know where i came from, etc. When i told them that i was English they said - "Oh - the English always say that New Zealand is like England was 30 years ago. What do you think?"

No it isn't.

I've heard this several times. Who on earth could compare 1970's England with New Zealand - and why? The towns & cities are like those in Australia or the USA. The scenery could be compared to various different countries as it is so varied. In rural New Zealand it is indeed very green, relaxed & friendly. But it still has more in common with Australia or the USA. Anyone who has travelled in rural USA will tell you how friendly the people are - that they don't bother locking their cars or houses, etc. Any idea of a similarly idyllic England is either myopic or hopelessly romantic. Blame it on the cucumber sandwiches.....

Now - will the weather improve such that i can go up in a balloon? The lovely Jackie at Aoraki Balloons assures me it will be...