Well, we started the day in Oamaru, and ended it in Omarama, which is not the same place, but did cause some confusion in the map reading department, but we've had a really lovely day. Omaru, where we stayed last night, has a breeding colony of little blue penguins, so undeterred by yesterday's penguin episode, we decided we'd try to see them this morning. On the way to the jetty, we passed a cheese factory and shop, so popped in for a quick tasting, viewing and purchasing of several very tasty cheeses! We got to the penguin colony nesting area to find that most of them were already out at sea for the day, (well it was a beautiful sunny day,) but we did see a couple of them, who were waiting for their waterproof feathers to regrow after their annual moult, so couldn't go out to sea, and were sitting in their nesting boxes looking pretty fed up! They have to go up to 24 days without food while this process goes on, so it's not surprising they looked fed up!
Our next stop was at some strange limestone cliffs, full of hollows, like a giant honeycomb, to see some Maori rock paintings. We didn't stay long, as the sand flies were particularly aggressive, and even biting Citronella Man. A better place to stop was at the Kurow Winery, where we bought a nice white wine to go with our cheeses for this evening mmmm! The vineyard is in a beautiful valley, surrounded by rolling hills, with even bigger hills behind those, it looked like cowboy country, and they even had posters advertising a local rodeo, but it was in December, so that was a pity. We were heading further inland, in the direction of Lake Tekapo, where we plan to be tomorrow, but we wanted an easy day today, so we didn't travel too far. We had a picnic lunch at a lovely spot called Parson's Progress, by Lake Aviemore, and relaxed in the sunshine. Tony had a swim in the lake, but although it looked very inviting he did say it was really cold, so I decided to sit and finish my book. We met an elderly couple there who were picking mushrooms. They said they used to camp at that spot years ago, so knew about the mushrooms. Our coversation was cut short when I realised that I'd left the kettle boiling on the gas and was in danger of boiling it dry and blowing up the camper van! Tony rushed off to rescue the kettle, and the couple gave us a load of mushrooms they'd picked. I made a big omelette with them tonight. I did take a photo of them first, that way if we do get poisoned people will be able to tell what we ate, ha ha! Of course if we don't update the blog tomorrow, it may just mean that there's no Internet, so don't worry.........