Freeman Travels Together: 12/28/2016 - Rocks (and cities) along the coast

Day of week: Wednesday

Cities visited: Curio Bay, Dunedin, Oamaru

Lodging: Lazy Dolphin Lodge at Curio Bay in the Catlins

Wednesday we said goodbye to the Lazy Dolphin Lodge and drove east and then north along the water towards Oamaru.

We stopped at the Nugget Point Lighthouse landmark. Nugget Point is a beautiful and rugged area sitting high over the ocean on top of some cliffs. This gives you a sweeping view of the water, including a rock formation just off the coast that creates a mesmerizing loop of waves crashing against rocks and each other. We recorded a 2 minute video of it because it seemed so relaxing and we want to watch it later. We also took some nice pictures, one of which is a New Years card option. Looking down onto the rocks we also saw several seals playing and lounging around. One of the most beautiful places we visited, so on comes the media!

On the short walk to Nugget Point

Whitewater on the way to Nugget Point

The Nugget Point lighthouse

Our New Year's card photo!

Nugget Point

Baby seal

Hard to capture the vastness of the ocean

A mesmerizing and relaxing video of the waves crashing at Nugget Point

After Nugget Point we stopped at the Catlins Soap Company, and purchased a variety of interesting bar soaps that will clean us for a while to come. Along the way Emma decided to get into a baa-ing match with a sheep.

Meant to trim this shorter, but the first 10 seconds is an Emma vs Sheep baa-ing match.

See if you can tell who is who!

We drove through Dunedin and parked, walked around the city centre "the Octagon", got Zach some allergy medication because he's been having some allergies, and saw the University of Otago and Selwyn College, where our friends Mike and Mikaela met.

We had a nice dinner at an upscale place called Plato, including our third try at seafood chowder, with this being the best one by far. Zach also tried shark, called elephant fish on the menu, which was not a hit. We finished the meal with a huge slice of chocolate cake that we barely ate half of between the two of us. On the bright side, breakfast was served the next morning!

Elephant fish (aka shark) -- not Zach's favorite meal

mmmmmm

Overall it was nice to visit a city that our friends spent so much time in, but we've found that the magic of NZ lies outsides the cities. Especially because many of the commercial establishments in this college town take a 2 week or so extended break starting just after Christmas and running through January 10th or so. This meant that a local chocolate maker was unexpectedly closed :(.

After Dunedin we drove through heavy rains north to Oamaru. As a night cap we visited the Moeraki Boulders. These are a series of 2 meter wide spherical rock orbs that look totally alien sitting on a beach. Some are cracked, some are half or completely buried in the sand, but they're all compelling and beautiful in their own way.