Hi There,

Our Journey continue;

Monday 18th Feb

We left Akaroa and started our journey South to Oamaru, travelling through all the back routes of Cantebury through people's farms to reach "State Highway 1" - we were expecting a 4 lane motorway since it is the main road in the South Island, but oh no it was a little 1 lane each way routes that was like our 'B' roads!!! When you get stuck behind a tractor there really is no going anywhere!!! No wonder a few miles takes so long to get anywhere!!

We were doing fine until this idiot of a driver decided to overtake us on a no overtaking bit and went so fast that all the gravel on the road splurted up at our windscreen and sure enough a big chip was left on the windscreen!! We have an insurace excess of $1,000 so we thought great that'll be gone when we drop the car off but we came up with an idea of planting bird poo over the chip to cover it up - a plan and a half we thought.............we carried on towards Oamaru when after 10 mins a huge creeeeaaaak sound happened and sure enough the chip had turned into a crack across the windscreen the size of my hand!! We phoned the car company and they said as long as we get if fixed and the car is returned in the condition we got it in then we don't have to pay the $1000 excess so we stopped in the middle of nowwhere at a little garage who said the nearest windscreen repair place was in Timaru so on we ploughed....

We got to Timaru and the garage man said we needed a whole new windscreen!! At a cost of $400 which we though wasn't bad so we booked it in for the nexr day and drove another hour South to Oamaru where we set up camp for the night. In the evening we drove to a lookout point where you can see in the distance the yellow eyed penguins coming ashore for the night and a fur sea lion sitting on the beach, which was cool and went to bed.

Tuesday 19th Feb

We got up early and drove the hour back the way to Timaru to the garage to leave the car and wondered about Timaru for 8 hours!!

We planned Fiji and then went to the beach for a wonder before heading towards the park. Charlotte nearly fell into the little creek as we jumped across back to land.

That night in Oamaru we went to a penguin wildlife reserve to watch the blue penguins come from the sea up a ramp to land and into their nests. There were 100's of the little things and they are so clumsy on land. There was also to Seals flapping around in the water. We stayed until 10 when most had come ashore.

Wednesday 20th Feb

We headed for Dunedin (Gaelic for Edinburgh), the sister city of Edinburgh. We headed down the highway and stopped of at the Moeraki Boulders which are lime crystal formations on the shore created by the sea. Interesting stuff to see and the beach was nice to, we never thought beaches would be as nice here as OZ.

Our next stop along the way was to Trotter gorge, where we saw caves, the gorge and Charlotte spotted this cool sign where neighbours were asking people not to shoot their pet pig!!! wierd what happened to just having a dog!!!

It took us 5hrs to get to Dunedin, where we will share our adventures with you soon.

Until next time

Iain and Charlotte