Whew, quite a drive from Mt Cook to Dunedin. As the official chauffeur, cook, photographer, dishwasher, launderer, hair dresser and plumber I am pretty busy – OK, I don’t really do all that, but it was still a long and tiring drive across the country.
There is a little place called Waitaki where the call of “real fruit sorbet” at Waitaki Orchards was enough to warrant a break and a treat, neither of which went quite as expected.
First, the treat: WOW! If you ever happen to be passing this way do yourself a favour and have one of their apricot sorbets. We all agreed it is possibly the best ice cream we have ever tasted. It was seriously good, made in-house, from their own apricots. Did I mention it was seriouusly good?
Then there was the break in our drive: it was a bit lot longer than expected. We have a bank “travel card” where you put a bunch of money into an account, convert it to a currency of choice and then can spend it like a local using a debit card. At the start, we each added funds and it became our slush fund along the way. The system has had been faultless all through our trip.
But Waitaki is in rural New Zealand, their shop is apparently only open for 3 months a year, during the fruit season, so they don’t want to pay a chunky monthly fee for something modern like pay wave. Since we couldn’t just tap the card, the machine wanted a PIN, which, since it hadn’t been used before, had fallen out of heads somewhere along the road. There was a justified fear of getting it wrong 3 times and having the card (and our slush money) locked.
No worries, I will get my phone and pay myself…but wait…you can’t tap. No worries, Christa will use her German credit card…but wait…it wouldn’t accept it, or another of her cards. No worries, pay cash…but wait…we haven’t seen cash since we got here. No worries, give us bank details and we will drop money into the account…but wait…”I only work here, I don’t have those details”.
What to do, apart from continuing to praise the excellent ice cream in an attempt to soothe the woman behind the counter who was very patient with us.
Our 5 minute driving break had now extended to 30 minutes and there was no solution to be had. She wanted to give us the ice creams fro free, but we were adamant we wanted to do the right thing and pay. The end result was that I have emailed them asking how we can send them the money…and praising the ice cream, of course.
Oamaru, on the west coast, has a lovely historic area near the wharf and possibly the only people in the world making a living from steam punk.
I think the place came out of a Steampunk art competition about 20 years ago where they likely didn’t know what to do with all the entries so they opened a “museum”.
Also in Oamaru is a Little Blue Penguin colony, right on the edge of town. No penguins during the day, they are in their luxury motel rooms.
But there were plenty of fur seals. At first we were delighted that there were 3 we could see. After about half an hour of watching we realised there was about 20 of them lying on the rocks, such great camouflage that they are hard to spot until they move.
And on the way back, a shag/cormorant colony on an abandoned wharf.
Today it is a bit of a grey day in Dunedin, made a bit brighter by Christa’s 36 hour birthday, starting in New Zealand time and ending in German time.
