Back to Christchurch

Our hotel had an abundant buffet breakfast as part of our room rate.  We took advantage of it and then headed for Christchurch with full stomachs.  However, we couldn’t leave town without first stopping at Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world.  There are warning signs everywhere not to turn down Baldwin street because it has no exit and you can’t turn around.  I took a photo but it surprised me that it could be steeper than some of the streets in San Francisco.

We have a five hour drive today, without any stops.  But we are driving up the east coast of the South Island and we want to enjoy the ocean whenever we can.  Our first stop was Shag Point.  It was cool to look at the Pacific Ocean to the east rather than to the west.

Shag Point often has fur seals.  I spotted only a couple.

We drove up a steep hill to find the Whalers Memorial Lookout.  We could see the ocean from almost every direction.  

The snow-covered Southern Alps were in the distance.

In the town of Oamaru there is a discovery center that is helping track and conserve the blue penguins.  They are the smallest of the penguins.  These penguins spend the day diving for food and return to burrows on the shore at night.  The center has created boxes all over the property for the penguins and they come and go as they choose.  We knew it was going to be a long day but I really, really wanted to see them.  So we made a quick detour, paid our money and convinced the woman in charge that Gayle was not going to be able to tour their whole property.  So she took us into a small, darkened shed.  We were told not to speak.  We could look down little periscopes and see the penguins who had not gone out to dive for food that day.  It was very cool.  

Directly across from the center was a restaurant overlooking the bay.  We were thirsty and so we went inside to get something to wet our whistles.  We discovered that they also served gelato.  So we had gelato for lunch.  It was exactly the right meal to have while on vacation.

Outside the restaurant was a cement sea wall, dotted with seals.

Reluctantly we got back out on the road towards Christchurch.  We still had over 3 hours of our trip to go.  The rest of the trip was graced with green hills, occasional views of the ocean and lots of cows and sheep.  We finally pulled up to our hotel just before 5 p.m.  We are staying at the Classic Villas, directly across from the Art Centre in downtown Christchurch.  We read the description of the hotel as we traveled today.  It was a glowing description, filled with adjectives like luxurious, scrumptious, 5 star and boutique.  Gayle went into to check us in and came out to say we were on the second floor and there was no elevator. The two women who manage the hotel had to help us carry our bags up the stairs.  I was embarrassed by how much shit I have!

We ordered food and ate in the room. We watched the live feed of the blue penguins coming in for the night in Oamaru. A large seal was stretched out directly in front of the camera and the blue penguins were trying to sneak up the hill behind him and the two other seals on the rocks. It was like watching a game of “Red Light, Green Light” only you get eaten if you move at the wrong time.