Another South Island Road Trip

With another round of visitors here, I completed another tour of the South Island by car. But this time, I was able to check out a new place, Stewart Island, which is below the South Island of New Zealand. The rest was comfortably familiar, and I know where my favorite spots are without needing much map assistance. It only takes a couple years to start settling in to a country of this size, it seems.
 
Before we left Christchurch for our road trip, we drove along Summit Road in the Port Hills for great views of the coastal areas. We saw hang-gliders and sheep and stopped at the farmer's market in Lyttelton, where a cheeky sign introduced them to NZ humor.

 
On the road trip heading to Stewart Island, we stopped at Moeraki Boulders and Dunedin, where the weather was very decent.

young seagull squeaking in the nests on Otago Peninsula

Railway Station

finally went inside the big church in Dunedin, very beautiful

plum crumble at hipster cafe, Morning Magpie

After Stewart Island, we drove to Queenstown and enjoyed a burger at Fergburger and ice cream at Patagonia. On the way out of town, we stopped to watch the bungy-jumpers and hit my favorite fruit stand. I got the blueberry 'real fruit ice cream' with cookies 'n cream ice cream as the base (the flavor combo worked, surprisingly!) and they tried the cherry and mixed berry with vanilla ice cream. We also snagged a bunch of 'seconds' fruit that was cheaper than the regular fruit, including apricots and cherries.

After a wonderful day in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, we headed back to Christchurch to enjoy more Whittaker's chocolate and made a pavlova (meringue-type cake) with the pre-made store base plus whipped cream and strawberries and green kiwi fruit. We also finally checked out the newly-built Margaret Mahy Playground in the evening and it was quite fun (the young adults and teens come out after the little kids have gone home, and there's a security guard on duty so it's safe).

Dunedin: Otago Settlers Museum

Before we left Dunedin, we popped into the Otago Settlers Museum so I could check out the exhibit on the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, the world-famous one where they are still tracking people from the 1970s and using that data for all kinds of research into human behavior and health. Less than 50% of them still live in the area, so they pay to fly them back every few years to gather samples and data -- gets quite expensive! Here are some of the interesting tidbits I learned:

 

Had to capture this comment on someone's fav decade - the 70s were the grooviest era!!

The automotive section had some cool vehicles as well. But the coolest thing had to be the nondescript parking ticket dispenser that had been converted into a poem generator. We thought that was the coolest thing ever and ended up getting a couple to take home. 

Dunedin: Otago Peninsula

We began our week-long road trip of the South Island by driving from Christchurch to Dunedin, stopping at the Moeraki Boulders along the way. Unfortunately the tide was in so some of the rocks were harder to look at and access, but this made for some fun runs to take photos before getting too wet.

Coming into Dunedin, we headed straight out onto the Otago Peninsula to look for albatross. The breeding colonies are closed off unless you pay the exorbitant fee for the tour, so we had to settle for a view of a soaring albatross overhead and lots of seagulls and some fur seals, who were snoozing on a pathway looking adorable.

seaweed looks like hair

he had rolled over by the time we walked back around!

this guy was a little suspicious of me photographing him

Then I took the Highcliff Drive on the drive back for great views on top of the peninsula. The weather was gorgeous, and the lambs were bleating -- it was a nice experience.

We walked around downtown Dunedin for a bit and checked out the big church and grounds.