It seems I am moving on all the time at the moment but that is the way it has to be to start seeing some of this country and take in all the sites. It feels bad sometimes just sitting and wasting a day but every now and again that needs to be done to take some time to plan and live cheaply to make sure there is extra cash and time to do all of the amazing things that are available here. WiFi seems to be the most exotic thing over here with bandwidth being more precious than gold (I have 200MB to use in 3 days at the hostel. Safe to say that is gone!). Due to all the moving about I decided to sacrifice the day yesterday and spend it in the local library with an alright internet connection in order to figure out where I want to go moving forwards.
My research has brought up a few things, the first being that Christchurch seems like a pretty crappy place to go. From what I have found so far it seems like Christchurch isn’t that great and is a little abandoned since the earthquake a few years ago that tore it apart. In addition to this is looks like the accommodation is quite expensive for places that don’t look too good in a large but abandoned city. It will be interesting to see but I don’t really plan on staying there for too long before heading further up the coast to Nelson. The second thing that I found out was that Oamaru has Penguins! Loads of them! This is why I have decided to have an extra day here rather than spending more time in Christchurch.
I got to Oamaru pretty early today as it isn’t far from Dunedin and the coach was stupidly early in the morning. The bonus of that is that I’ve had a full day in Oamaru to explore and take a look about. To be fair it is only a little town but it does have a few interesting sites. The only downside about looking around today is that since its Good Friday nothing is open yet I still managed to find a few little gems.
The first thing I randomly bumped into was the Steampunk 
HQ building. It isn’t something I was looking for but it is pretty easy to spot by the huge Steampunk train outside. For those of you reading this that have no clue what Steampunk is, it is often recreating industrial items as other things and making them look steam powered. The train out front had been built up to look like a train but was made from all sorts of different things originally, all welded together into a crazy sculpture. To add to this whenever someone put a $2 coin in the machine it suddenly came to life, throwing steam and flames into the air from its chimney stack.
Further down the pier, along the sea wall I managed to find another rock to practice balancing on. I don’t know why it has become a thing that I keep doing but I do like the idea of learning something new and I have always liked to try and balance myself in various ways so I guess this is quite fitting. All that I need to do now is finally loose some more weight to make the task a little easier and then when I can finally get settled start practising doing hand stand.
After wandering away from the main pier I found myself at the local park which was actually quite impressive. Situated right next to the tiny beach was the park with all of its unsual toys for the kids to play on and the family BBQ area. I have to say I am really impressed by the idea of the pay-per-
go BBQ and I think more places need it. In the centre of the park was a massive BBQ that could be used by anyone for only $2 (about £1). For that price the heat would start for 30 mins and give you enough time to cook whatever you were planning without all of the extra hassle of bringing a BBQ out with you or finding a way to take it home later while it was still hot. I think there are a few big parks that would really benefit from this back in the UK, although I doubt it would ever become a thing.
Oamaru is famed for its Yellow eyed and Blue eyed penguins who live and nest along the shore by the harbour. During the day you get get onto this main sea wall as the gates are open and so I took a wonder down. About half way down I heard a noise and looked down to see a massive Sealion sat a few meters below be on another step. It seems to rear up for a moment before making its way to another comfier spot on the rocks below where it now seemed camouflaged to all of the other tourists passing by. During the night though it was not possible to get down there are the gates are locked forcing everyone wanting to see penguins through the sanctuary and to pay for the show. I didn’t make it down there in time today but still went for a walk anyway to get some air and see what was about and I am glad I did because I still did manage to see a couple of 
penguins. As I got the to car park I noticed that there was something moving at the bottom of one of the trees in the closed off area that I had been walking in just a few hours earlier. As I sat still and waited I was treated to the site of a little penguin wandering about and relaxing as it pleased, getting settled in for the evening. I watched it for a while before it disappeared into the undergrowth before stating to make my way back to the hostel. A few minutes down the road I noticed a group of people had stopped and were being quite around another tree. It turned out that another penguin had decided to make its nest in a tree right next to the main path, no where near any of the others and in full view of many curious tourists. For some reasons this little guy didn’t seem to mind and just sat there for a while not moving before relaxing and starting to groom himself.
All in all not a bad little day of wandering about. Maybe tomorrow I will find something new or go and visit the penguins properly this time.
