We arrived in Omaru on Easter Sunday and the place was like a ghost town. On the Way we stopped in a small town called Twizzle. We had planned to stay in Twizzel for a few days, but there was nothing there so we moved on after a stop off at the bakery. I bought some Cadburys Creme Eggs to munch on as it was Easter! As, as normal Si had forgotten what the date was.
Driving to Omaru, the weather improved a little. We stopped off to check out some Maori Art what was highlighted on the AA map. Sadly loads of the Art had been graffiti and the other parts had been taken away to a Museum in Auckland, thus making the stop a little pointless.
Omaru was a small town with one main street. The I-Site told us that there was no freedom camping, so we drove out of the town to a campsite. We were told it was $5 but when we arrived the price had gone up, which was a little hard to believe as the camp site was like a sketch from "Little Britain", but the New Zealand version. On the way to the camp site we almost ran out of petrol, as we forgot to top the tank up before leaving the last town.. which was fun rolling into town!
The next morning we used the hot showers (first in a few days Lol) and headed back into the main town. We went to the I-Site again and found out about places to view Penguins in the wild. We went to one area and thought we saw then but they were in fact a different type of bird all together. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking around the towns shops, where we watched people carving in sand and lime stone. We also found a retro stop were we managed to pick up a few cool tapes for our tape player in the Van!
After dusk we made our way to another penguin viewing area a few kilometers up the coast. We were lucky enough to see several penguins come in from Sea to nest at the beach for the night. One of the penguins even came right up in front of me and Si, which was really cool as we weren't expecting to see them so close up in the wild.
Happy with our penguin viewing we made our way in the direction of Dunedin. The first campsite we came to was a DOC site but it felt like a scene from a horror movie, as it was in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a wood. We then decided to drive further down the coast again to find a better place to camp for the night.
We eventually decided to camp at a site near the Moreaki Boulder, as we had planned to see them the following morning. We drove into the camp site but the owners weren't there. There were some other campers there who let us into the kitchen so we could cook our tea. After about an hour talking with the two other campers who were more than a little bit strange we decided to call it a night and go to sleep. To our delight we woke up the next morning and found that someone had left the bathrooms and showers open, so we managed to use them and disappear before the owners turned up!
The Moreaki Boulders were like giant marbles scattered along the shoreline for around two hundred feet. We could see most of the boulders and only a few were still underwater level. The marbles are apparently made from compressed mud and rock and were deposited on the beach a few hundred years ago, making for a pretty cool view.
Before we got to Dunedin we took a small detour to Shag Point. The name caught our eye and definitely made us laugh. The area was made up of a very rocky shore line that hundreds and hundreds of fur seals used for there home.