March 23 - 24

After our strange experience with the siren in the middle of the night we got up early (for us) and called the parents whilst we had the internet. We said goodbye to the beautiful lake knowing we would see lots more great sights over the next few weeks.

We headed for Omarama along one of the most scenic roads we have ever seen. We stopped on several occasions to take pictures, one of which was of Lake Pukaki with Mount Cook in the background peeking through some clouds 3753m high. Amazing! We continued onto Omarama and looked at the private hot tubs you can hire whilst gazing over at the mountains, it looked awesome, but having been in the hot springs last night we couldn't be bothered to get wet and decided that the view definitely wasn't as good as at Lake Tekapo.

Further down the road we stopped by another beautiful lake and had lunch whilst looking at more amazing scenery with no-one else but nature. Driving here is much easier for Sean than in Australia where you would drive hundreds of kms without seeing anything but desert. Here, the distances between towns are much shorter and the scenery is simply spectacular.

We arrived in Oamaru - our destination for the evening, but after driving through the town and realising camp sites were expensive and the penguins were a big costly tourist attraction and the town was just a strange place we took Chris and Kirsty's advice and drove on to Moeraki for the evening. The campsite was much cheaper and after an interesting drive to the lighthouse we not only got to see yellow eyed penguins in their natural habitat, climbing up to their nests for the evening whilst chatting to each other, but we also got to see seals and sea lions. They were all in a natural reserve with barely a tourist in sight. Walking along and just seeing them is indescribable - leaving Oamaru was definitely a good decision!