The person on the phone said to Harry "Yes, of course. You can board the ferry early". So we motored down the Gorge at 10.30 pm arriving at the Bluebridge car park to be told "Boarding time is 1.15 am". "But you said ..." was on the tip of our tongues - but we didn't. Instead we meandered around the harbour on a perfect Wellington evening. We remembered the first time - we boarded the ferry by 11.00 pm, tucked up in bed by 11.15pm and at 6.00 am woke up pretty refreshed for a day of travel. Overnight accommodation with ensuite $40 - pretty good we thought. Second and third time not so lucky - late boarding, 4 hours sleep and an unwelcome wake up call at 6.00 am followed by another five minutes later. Never again.
Off the ferry and in a convoy of fellow travellers we headed to Blenheim - first stop the bakery. Vaccination pass in hand we asked for a cup of tea and settled for raspberry buns and sandwiches for breakfast. At that hour the vegan pie just didn't do it for me. While munching and sipping we watched several white people movers stop and disgorge their passengers. Sleepy eyed workers walking out with loaves of white bread and pies or doughnuts. Nutritional food for a hard days work on the grapes!!
Second stop was the seal colony just north of Kaikoura. Babies suckling on their mums and enjoying the morning sun. We missed the birth of a little one by seconds. Nature has its use for everything - nothing wasted here - the seagull happily pecked on the placenta.
We stopped for refuelling (us not the car) at Kaikoura (nice to see it was busy) and later on at Rolleston. There we found a well known coffee place and renamed it RRR - Rolleston Retirement Restaurant - the spot for Friday connections. We arrived in Timaru in time for a walk around Caroline Bay before it started to rain and settled for an early dinner - where there were $12 senior meals on the menu. Another grey-powered group of customers. "Seventy is the new fifty" they say - and we both consider ourselves lucky to be in that group of healthy happy pensioners (well I will be in January).
That night, Harry settled for bed and I went down to Caroline Bay to see the little yellow eyed penguins. They weren't obliging on that wet cold evening and after talking to an Irish couple (third time they had been down with no luck), and a couple from Taranaki (first time for them) we saw one little penguin before she scuttled back to her nest. Naively, I had thought they would arrive in hoards to relieve their partner from sitting on the eggs (after all the egg warmer hadn't eaten for 12 hours), but apparently not. Obviously, the partners preferred the sea and a full tum. The umbrella had not done its job and on returning to our digs I was pleased there was a "hot bod" in the bed to warm my feet.
After catching up with Michelle and Zane and their little ones in the morning we drove down to Papatowai via Oamaru. First stop was the Steam Punk museum. Oh so cool. And so was the little heritage street that I wandered up and down while Harry talked "cars" with the person in the ticket office at the automobile museum. Aliens and time travel were on my mind as I was later convinced the Moeraki Boulders would hatch aliens given a favourable climate.
Papatowai in the Catlins is a short drive from Balclutha. We stacked up on food and as we pulled up the other set of grandparents and granddaughter gave us welcoming hugs and returned to their board game. Karen the owner had stressed about five of us in the little cabin - but we fitted in ok and managed to navigate around each other for the next five days. After all we had shared slightly pokier places than this. The little cabin had its quirks. Two of the beds share a room with the table, microwave, bench, tv and fridge. There was no running water in the kitchen and our dishes are washed by the hostess after breakfast and dinner. We felt a bit guilty but soon got used to having our own personal dishwasher. Our stove was an outside barbeque and if it rained the owners barbeque on her deck.
We barbequed the mince for our tacos and then went through our little actress's lines for her show "The Grinch who stole Christmas". It took a while as I was Narrator 3, Policeman, Cindy Lou, Max and a couple of other Whos, and the other grandparents were also 6 or 7 other characters - Harry was the Grinch. The lines were passed around - our young Director occasionally piping up when Lily Lou was required to say something. The second practice the next day was a tad faster - thanks to some of us having the ability of reading upside down and remembering which characters we were playing.
A walk down to the beach provided some amusement for the locals and their dogs as we walked along singing "Slow down you move to fast" (ie oldies chasing young one). We played in the sand, wandered around the rock pools and found a forest walk. Then we took off for the Old Coach Road - impressive Kotukutuku shedding their bark and along the trail there were plenty of invisible dinosaur eggs to collect. Thankfully we carried bottomless bags as we arrived back at the cars with 4002 eggs ready for hatching. Dinner and a game of UNO and paper, scissor and rock tag set the tone for most of the other summer evenings.
The next morning we said goodbye to our fellow travellers who were making their way back home for the actual "Grinch who stole Christmas" drama show. But before that and over breakfast we were all promoted to spies (I was Apollo Spitfire and Harry 87) with pets who have spy skills (Giraffe for me and Meerkat for Harry). We packed a lunch and drove to Curio Bay. Wow - a fossilised forest - trees laying where they fell millions of years ago after a flood of volcanic ash hit the region. A friendly seal came to say hello - we talked for a while in seal language and then explored more of the rocks.
