Pictures from day two

We woke up November 19th to a much more beautiful campground than we had originally thought. The darkness had hidden the flowers all along the stream and the full extent of the meandering stream itself. Off in the distance were snowcapped mountains all around us. Parked a ways from us was what looked like a weird cross between an 18-wheeler truck and a caboose. I'm not sure if it actually moved or if they lived there.

We set up our camp table and had breakfast in the sunlight looking at the mountains and listening to the stream run right past our camp. Shannon soon learned that if she saw a good picture, she should take it right away. A haze moved in while we were eating and she lost the pictures of the mountains she had wanted to take. She still got some good shots though. Afterwards, we loaded up everything and set off again.

Other than stopping every five feet for pictures, lol, we didn't really stop to look at much along the way. However, we came across a rock face with some Maori artwork on it so we pulled over to have a look. Basically, it was a bit of mountain along an ancient Maori path where it was speculated the Maori had camped year after year along the way to wherever they were going. Ancient Maori graffiti, lol. The cliff side had been fenced off where the artwork was located but the damage had all been done years ago. Near the turn of the 20th century, some scholar had come through and actually carved the pictures out of the rock so he could take them back to a museum or possibly keep them for himself, I forget. Seriously though, it just kills me that someone would just start hacking out ancient artwork from the rock face. Not to mention, hundreds of modern folks had left their names all over the rock as well. It made it hard to tell what was Maori and what was graffiti.

Later on, we spotted a sheep that had gotten outside its fence. Surprisingly this seemed to happen a lot. There were quite a few sheep wandering along the edge of the road. This one got spooked by our car and ran out into the road. Shannon trailed along behind it as it just booked down the road, lol. Periodically, it would try to get back through the fence with no success and then it would hop back on the road and take off running again. We got a pretty funny video of it on the camera. We stopped at one point trying to get it to go to the side of the road so we could pass it and then this postal truck went roaring by. I was so scared it would hit the poor thing but it was okay. Finally, it stayed on the roadside as we drove by. I hope it made it back in the fence.

While in between towns, way out in the country, we came across an old cemetery. I'm fascinated by cemeteries so we stopped and had a look around. Some of the graves were so old as to have been if not some of the first Westerners to come to New Zealand, at least the children or grandchildren of the first settlers. We also noticed, and we saw this at lots of places during our trip, that there was an inordinate number of WWI dead. For such a small country, their communities lost quite a few young men in that war. The newest graves were from as late as 2007. Just across the fence was a herd of cattle. Possibly the most inquisitive, curious cattle I've ever seen, lol. They stood right along the fence line and just stared at us. It was hilarious.

An hour or so further down the road brought us to a little village called Moeraki and the Moeraki Boulders. The village, or at least what we saw of it, consisted of a restaurant and gift shop. The Boulders are a geological formation on the beach. They are "huge spherical stones that are scattered over the sandy beaches. The boulders are classed as septarian concretions, and were formed in ancient sea floor sediments. They were created by a process similar to the formation of oyster pearls, where layers of material cover a central nucleus or core. For the oyster, this core is an irritating grain of sand. For the boulders, it was a fossil shell, bone fragment, or piece of wood. Lime minerals in the sea accumulated on the core over time, and the concretion grew into perfectly spherical shapes up to three metres in diameter. The original mudstone seabed has since been uplifted to form coastal cliffs. Erosion of the cliffs has released the three ton captive boulders, which now lie in a haphazard jumble across the beach. Further erosion in the atmosphere has exposed a network of veins, which gives the boulders the appearance of turtle shells. Similar boulders occur at Shag Point, and the nearby swimming beach of Katiki. In Hawke's Bay in the North Island, scientists have found that the central core of similar boulders contained perfectly preserved skeletons of turtles, sea snails and extinct reptiles, such as plesiosaurs." (From a New Zealand travel website) It was raining so we didn't go down to the beach. We hung out in the cafe and had some coffee. What a beautiful spot it was!

The rain finally let up and we headed on down the road. The next stop was Dunedin which is the Scottish part of New Zealand. It was founded by Scottish settlers in 1848 and they gave it the ancient name of Edinburgh: Dunedin. Since Shannon is of Scottish decent, she really wanted to see the city. It's actually quite beautiful. The road headed uphill and then after cresting the hill, the city was spread out below. When we move back to New Zealand, we definitely want to go back to Dunedin and spend more time.

Not too far out of Dunedin, we headed towards our next camping spot, another DOC spot called Purakanue Bay Scenic Reserve. We turned off the road on to a dirt track and drove for what seemed like an hour. The hills on each side of the little road were covered in sheep and cows. Finally the trees and hills opened up and exposed a gorgeous cove. One thing about New Zealand, it has the most beautiful coves. You could just be tooling along, trees and hills to each side of you, and then BAM here's this gorgeous spot just there. The road and the camping spots were all pretty wet and swampy looking from the rain so we decided to drive up the hill off to the right. What we didn't notice until we were already on the "road" was that it was less a road and more a rutted cow path. Trucks with big tires had obviously driven up it when it was very wet causing these huge ruts. Shannon amazingly managed to navigate it without getting us stuck and we were soon sitting on top of the hill with the cove spread out before us. It was truly breathtaking.

Along the fence behind us was what appeared to be a headstone but all it said was "Dave." There were beer bottles set in the cement next to the stone. We weren't sure if Dave was a man or possibly a dog but it sure was one amazingly beautiful resting place.

After fixing dinner, we snuggled in to watch Identity on the DVD player. I was out before they discovered they had the same birthday, lol.