Driving

Let me just explain… My beauty sleep was me lolling in bed in a drained and inert state. What Ruth had failed to mention was the fact that there was also a new years concert outside by the, (LOUD!,) clock tower till some time past midnight and then with conversation and game playing*, it must have been very close to the time the alarm went off next door.

That said I have long refined my “lizard brain” so after just lazing some place warm for a while I recovered quiet a bit.

And that was for the best, as it was time for another longish haul in the car, and it was my name on the bit of paper pulled for today’s driver.

And yeah, that’s pretty much what I did.

I’m not a very good “dude.”
Truth be told I let my membership lapse to the y chromosome club or something, I can barely figure out which part of a car is the front bit and which is the burny hot back pipe bit.
But some ancient ancestral manly-protector part of my brain patted me on the head when I was driving along and Ruth was sleeping in the passenger seat.

Of course we sailed merrily into Dunedins highway, and I was still at the helm.

This was fine, it’s all just one direction right?

Some madness and random swerving later we were free of the pesky city and its well built roads of DOOM… and I was now bouncing merrily of the crazy crooked peninsula, one lane, pot hole lined, blind corner filled, roads… OF MORE DOOM!

And, well, the posted speed was 100…

No, I didn’t feel the need to hit it at that speed, in fact snails may have felt the need to over take me, but you’d never guess from the frozen look of fear on Ruthies countenance. Maybe I should have been looking at the road instead of that?

Some how we found our camp ground!

Minutes later my death grip had been prized from the wheel and we set about setting up the tent. (As you could imagine from my lack of manliness this mostly consists of Ruth doing things right, and me following her about doing things wrong, but with a measure of enthusiasm.)

I would also like to point out that if I am found dead before the end of this adventure and the cause is hard to ascertain, if I’m found near the back of a car the culprit is the boot lid… let me explain.
Every SINGLE time I go to get anything from the back of the car, some how, in some unknowable way, the corner of the boot lid seeks out the very top of my skull and skewers it with the a pain like a million exploding suns, I have a very soft head now, and this may explained my sinking brain power at this time.

Any way, lives secured, tent erected, maps checked, we went for another little drive.

And man! Did we find cool things!

We had set out empowered by the word of the day “albatross.”
But the place we found was in fact wreathed in little flying/waddling seagulls.
None-the-less after a few one way conversations with this flock, they allowed us access to the touristy hub place where we eagerly partook in reading material and spent our shiny coins of the day on a tour.

Our guide was a Frenchman with an OUTRRRRRAAAAAHHHJOUS accent, and he diligently explained how awesome the birds we were about to spot were.
Long lived, capable of spending years at sea, can fly while asleep, and mate for life even though they spend years apart travelling on the winds and them all looking the same.

We then walked up a very steep hill, (though not the steepest around, we went to Baldwin a bit later,) and looked out at our albatross buddies.

These things are seriously amazing.
Monstrously large… like, HUGE, and they just spread there EPIC wings and up they go, like they weigh not a jot.

As you can see, I was quiet taken by them.

And then, (after our guide very politely tolerated an Aussie so full of her self we all took her for a yank,) we went even further up the peninsular to behold the disapeering gun.

Some times you have to hand it to man kind, we can truly think up some clever things.

This thing was a cannon that springs out of the hill side, fires, and disapers back underground and reloads, all in one swift motion… In world war one no less!
Wow.

Our guide for this was a splendid old chap, who embellished stories with colour and was just so jolly that he was a joy to meet.

But soon enough we had to depart, and the little sky rats had “decorated” our car, but on our tour we had over heard some one dropping a tidbit far more useful.
We discovered there was a tour of the nearby penguin beaching point about to leave, so that is where we hurried too next.

Arriving just in time to fill the last spaces on the bus we bobbed down to the beach, where we explored pathways and trenches designed to put us in positions where we could see the little birds return to shore after a hard days fishing.

But we didn’t see too much of that.

We did however end up getting really close to some adorable penguins and one extra cute and fuzzy edition of the species!
Awwww! The little bubbling guy looks like he’s in a polarfleece!

After that it was time to head home, (tent home, not real home) once again and hit the ol’ inflatable mattress.

Good day.


*Still playing a lot of cards, but also busted out my copy of galaxy trucker.
Yes Glen, its as awesome as we had hoped.