NZ South Island 2025

Sadly today, we are leaving our wonderful hosts Peter and Deirdre to head out on a road trip to see a bit more of the South Island. The weather has turned on us a bit with light rain experienced soon after departing from Alexandra, turning into quite heavy rain as we approached Queenstown airport to drop off Phil and Luth to catch their flight to Auckland. Peter then drove us to the rental car office near the airport to collect our rental car. It was still raining. After our final farewells to Peter, we headed off into the rain in our Toyota Prius, and the rain stayed with us for much of our drive to Timaru. The route we took through Omarama, Otematata, Kurow was very scenic and despite the inclement weather we occasionally had to stop and get a photo The route took us through the Lindis Pass where we experienced our first "only in NZ moment". Climbing up to the summit of the pass we came around a corner only to be greeted by a long line of traffic that had come to a halt. We...

A relaxing day is planned to allow us to catch up on laundry etc before heading off tomorrow in our respective directions. Phil and Luth  are flying to Auckland and we plan to get a rental car and begin our road trip of the South Island, with our first stop at Timaru on the East Coast. Starting the day with a local walk, we head down along the river side and over the Shaky Bridge with a plan to end up at the Industry Lane Cafe (a Macdonald favourite) for a cup of coffee, and perhaps a date scone. We did end up having the coffee and shared a date scone (they are large). This was our second visit to the cafe which is ideally located on the rail trail from Clyde and has a great success rate at attracting the attention of passing bike riders who are easily tempted for a coffee and sugar hit from the pastries.  Our walk then took us back through the town, where we had a good look around and found Phil and Luth hiding in another cafe in town. They gave the walk a miss but still need...

 Our day starts with a morning walk along the river. It is another great day. We have been very lucky with the weather.   Old and New Bridge side by side At around 10 am we climbed about the Mitsubishi 4WD ute and headed off to do a bit of bush bashing through an area that was used as the film set for the movie "Power of the Dog". Also recently filmed in this area is the next series of "East of Eden" soon to be released on Netflix. Stunning countryside Soon we began to see some livestock, having not seen a lot driving along the main roads. This flock of sheep seemed very keen on occupying this particular corner of the paddock." One of the hazards of driving this track is the "What the F#@!" sign, which appear regularly with little explanation of what you are about to experience, other than it is wise to slow down. As we are now driving through farms, cattle also wander aimlessly along the roadside and we have to wait a few times for a clear path throu...