After driving down from the mountains, we headed to Moeraki, a small fishing village on the eastern coast. We stayed at a small motel overlooking the bay in a lovely little village. The next day, we laid low, allowing Spencer to recover a bit from the flu bug and his fall the prior day. The following day, we headed over to see the Moeraki Boulders, a strange collection of spherical boulders on the beach up the road. These boulders are incredibly round and scattered over the beach and in the water, the result of an accretion process similar to the development of a pearl. There are many tourists there to see the boulders, but it is still worth the visit, as these are truly strange.

Our hotel is the building in the foreground on the right.

The hotel from the road looking out over the bay and Pacific,

The view from our balcony.

It is a very picturesque bay.

Barb working on where we are headed next.

The Moeraki Boulders.  Very strange.

Some of them are almost perfect spheres.

After our visit to the boulders, we headed to Fleur’s Place, a renowned restaurant in Moeraki Village. It is a cute, rustic restaurant, right on the harbor, that specializes in fish that is delivered straight from the fishing boats 50 feet away. We really didn’t know this restaurant was right there but we were able to walk to the restaurant from our motel for a very delicious lunch. That afternoon, we went to Katiki Point, again about 1 mile from our motel, to see the very rare and endangered yellow-eyed penguins. The penguins leave their 2 chicks up on the hills during the day, while the adults go out to sea for the day to get food. The hills were fenced off for the nesting grounds, but we were able to see three sets of chicks who were waiting in the bush (next to the fencing) for momma and poppa to come home with dinner. As it started to rain, we left them for the warmer motel room for the evening.

This is the only picture I have of Fleur’s Place restaurant.  The restaurant atmosphere was very rustic, but pleasant.  And the food exceptional.

A yellow eyed penguin chick waiting for mom and/or dad to bring dinner.  Remember, these are the rarest penguins in the world.

Here are a couple of Yellow eyed penguin chicks making there way somewhere.  Who knows where.  These are fairly mature chicks.  We saw some a few days later that were just balls of brown, fluffy feathers.

The next day, we drove back up to Oamaru, a strange town that has a few blocks of older Victorian buildings. It also seems to be home for the New Zealand Steampunk culture, with its own “museum”, or whatever you might call it. We wandered around the old part of town, looking at little artsy shops in the renovated old buildings. After lunch, we got back in the car for the trip down the coast toward Dunedin, our next stop.

The Steampunk museum in Oamaru.  We did not go in as admission seemed a bit high.

A rather strange steam engine sculpture out front of the museum.  Barb read on the internet that one of the earliest appearances of Steampunk was in the 1960’s television show, “The Wild Wild West”.  Remember that one?  The show was set in the old west, mid 1800’s but had some rather modern and futuristic twists to the weapons and contraptions both the good and bad guys used.  I loved that show.

A view from our new “home” in Portobello just outside of Dunedin.

Our cottage.