Day -13 -Rain Drops

We arose early (what else) to a clear day and lo and behold we could actually see across the inlet to Dunedin. John 2 (the butler - and apparently our private butler since we were the lone residents in this huge house) was ready for us in the kitchen where we had breakfast and took off for parts north and west. To our surprise this hotsy totsy kitchen had no espresso machine or whipper so no flat white this morning.

We went into Dunedin and stopped at the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street and took the mandatory photo. We opted out of a morning tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory so off we went. Guess what, it started to rain. We had been so lucky in the South Island, but it caught up to us.

Baldwin Street - Worlds Steepest

Moeraki Boulders

On the road to see the unexplained boulders at the beach at Moeraki (place to sit or daydream in Maori). No one quite knows why or how the boulders got on the beach but there they sit quite impressively. One theory is that they were ballast on Chinese ships hundreds of years ago ..... Who knows? So we tramped a bit through the wet sand and went on to our next port of call.

Glacial Lake Autumnal Color

There was a photo stop along the way at a turquoise glacial lake with golden autumnal colored trees around it. The color contrast was just lovely.

Sheeps

Driving north toward Mt Cook the weather got worse. There was no real hope that we would see the top but as we sat having coffee at the Heritage Lodge at Lake Tekapo the top peaked through the clouds, but that was it. The Heritage Lodge has an Alpine Center dedicated to Sir Edmund Hillary, who we all know(or should know) was the first to reach the top of Mt Everest. The area is a major mountain climbing area and we did see some incredible cloud/sun pattern in the sky (well where else?)

Amazing Sky

We drove on to our lodging for the night at Lake Tekapo, Peppers. Quite a lovely place. The area has a well know observatory which Pat signed up to go see but the weather was so bad that the trip was cancelled. The room was actually a town house with living room, dining room, full kitchen...fully equipped with everything but NAPKINS!!! Downstairs we had a GORGEOUS bathroom, bedroom and laundry facility. So let's do our laundry said we. This turned out to be a comedy of errors with endless wet cycles in our machine, saved by the evening fellow, getting the wrong clothes later that night, getting our clothes back several hours later, back to the wrong wet clothes delivered in the morning to bla bla bla.

It is the morning after, as this is being written so you will happy to know that the clothes are still not dry. We are driving this morning with a bag of damp clothes in the back.

Back to our evening, we ordered room service which was very good, watched NCIS LA and Law and Order SVU (fairly recent episodes too) and played cards. On to Christchurch.