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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Leaving Australia

Hello friends!

Sorry for the lack of blogging, but the past two weeks have been quite crazy for us. We were busy packing up our apartment, cancelling power/phones/insurance/internet, moving, cleaning, and going to Wet 'n Wild with our friends from Sydney. It was a crazy couple of weeks.

But, now we are in oh so lovely New Zealand and enjoying every minute of being here! We spent 3 nights in Christchurch before we headed to Mount Cook for a day of hiking. Now we are in Oamaru for a quick stop before we head to Invercargill for 3 nights. The scenery is beautiful in New Zealand, with every few minutes along the road offering another picture perfect opportunity for post card, desktop background, or lifelong memory.

For those of you interested, yes, the entire country looks like the landscapes depicted in The Lord of the Rings movies. There are also millions of sheep, tons of farmland, next to no people, and lots of talk about rugby. Trip highlights so far are: driving up hills so high on roads so skinny that you get butterflies in your stomach, coming within inches of seals, penguins, and sheep, and Andrea driving on the wrong side of the road in a manual and trying to overtake a semi-truck road blocking us, and it was her first day driving in nine months...scary!

Right now we're in sleepy Oamaru, a transient pit-stop town if you've ever seen one, but it is the steampunk capital of the New Zealand, it hosts a wonderful whiskey distillery and licensed tea room where you can sample the local whiskey, and it is home to a colony of little penguins that come to shore every evening. Back in the 1870s, Oamaru was a bumping town/city and most of the old buildings are still standing and being used today, so it has some great history.

Today we are off to Invercargill, but will stop to see the Moeraki Boulders along the way and hopefully grab some delicious seafood chowder at a cafe we read about in the Lonely Planet...yummy!

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