Thursday, March 9: Oamaru to Paringa

Oamaru to the West Coast - 442 km driving

The never-ending storefront at Riverstone

We wake up in Oamaru and watch the sunrise over the harbour - by tonight, we’ll be watching the sunset over the ocean on the other side of the South Island. We start out by doubling back a little bit to have breakfast at the Riverstone Kitchen, which Dominic spotted in a guidebook and really wanted to try. It’s definitely worth the detour - my smashed peas on toast with a fried egg on top are one of the tastiest breakfasts I’ve had anywhere, and the boys enjoy their brekkies just as much. Erik has fun playing in the kids’ room off to the side - NZ restaurants and other public spots really cater well for families with little ones, and this is the first place that I really notice and appreciate that. After our delectable brekkie, we explore the rest of the complex. There’s a series of old-timey-looking store facades that open into a sprawling, interconnected series of gift shops with all manner of souvenirs and knick-knacks - we have fun exploring the twisty aisles and looking at all kinds of random treasures. Then we take a look at the owners’ fascinating homestead - a still-under-construction castle that manages to look impressive while still being low and solid to withstand earthquakes.

Our home for the next 10 days... ah, and somebody's castle

Riding (in an RV) through Rohan

This is one of our major driving days, and probably the most demanding - our route takes us from Oamaru up through the mountains towards the west coast. The scenery is amazing - we’re literally riding through Rohan from Lord of the Rings, with its green hills and sweeping vistas. The size of the vehicle and the narrowness of the roads (not to mention driving on the left side!) make it an adventure for Dominic to drive (especially when we hit sharp switchbacks) but he does an amazing job and gets us through the craziness safe and sound. We also manage to figure out a few little tips to keep things from flying all over the RV - like tying the fridge door shut with my scarf to keep it from swinging open on every turn.

Feeding our curiosity at Puzzling World

We stop for a picnic lunch in the parking lot of Puzzling World, in Wanaka - about halfway from our start to our destination. Then we explore the puzzle museum. It’s divided into two parts - an extensive series of optical illusions and an outdoor maze. We start with the illusions - there’s a gallery of cool holograms, then a room of faces that all seem to follow you, and a bunch of other installations that make you doubt your eyes or other senses. Probably the most amazing (and disorienting) is the tilted room, where gravity doesn’t work quite the way your eyes think it should. We sit Erik in a chair that slides “up” a hill, and we play with billiard balls that roll up a table into the pocket. Once we’ve done messing with our senses, we check out the maze - it’s fun for a while but we decide to cut it short before we actually finish, in favour of going into town to find ice cream. :) We head down to Black Peak Gelato where we get some tasty treats and eat them while enjoying the incredible lakefront view that reminds us a little bit of Lake Okanagan in BC. Ice cream definitely has some fun local variations - mine is lemon, lime, and bitters, which is wonderfully refreshing.  

Fun in the tilted room

wheeeee!!!

Lake Wanaka

Swingbridge at the Blue Pools

After our ice cream we continue on through the mountains, with lots more exciting driving. We make a quick stop to trek through the woods and across swingbridges to see the gorgeous and aptly named Blue Pools. Some more intrepid souls are jumping off the bridge into the icy water, but we just observe and then head back to our cozy RV. We make it through the twistiness and narrowness of the Haast Pass and head up the main highway on the west coast (which is still plenty narrow and twisty) in time to see the sunset on this side of the island.

Blue Pools

Our destination for the night is the South Westland Salmon Farm, which lets RVs stay in its parking lot through the Okay2Stay program. We enter the name into the GPS and trust to that, but it’s getting dark when we get to the spot specified by the GPS and there’s nothing there but a seemingly-abandoned building. This is also where we realize that our on-board wi-fi system isn’t much use when there’s zero cell phone service. Thankfully, we have a hard-copy print-out that has actual latitude/longitude coordinates for the place, so we punch those up on the GPS and realize we’ve got about 200 metres left to go. We find the place and try to set up the BBQ that came with our RV rental so we can cook some steaks and corn for dinner, but we realize that a crucial piece of tubing is missing so we end up cooking indoors. We enjoy our delicious meal, admire some unfamiliar constellations in an incredibly clear sky, and settle down for a lovely refreshing rest after today’s demanding mountain driving.