12.29.11 Christchurch to Te Anau

Had an 8am pick-up for our Campervan this morning.  I think we had a few moments of shock as we realized that not only would we be driving this huge van on the other side of the road, but also the driver's seat is on the right, it's a stick shift (haven't driven one of those in ages), and the shifter is on the left of the driver.  Not to mention we'd somehow need to remember how to empty out our toilet water, check the oil, charge it up, fill the clean water tank, convert our sofas to beds, and in the meantime get where we were trying to get (which we had no idea about either).  But an hour and a half later we made it out of the parking lot, took turns practicing driving on an empty street, stalled out more than once, then headed to the PICK-N-SAVE for some provisions.  We *may* have left a little bit of paint on a car while we tried to park in a regular spot.  Damn this thing is big! 

We headed down the East Coast of the island to see the blue penguins at Oamaru.  Very cute to see a few of them wandering near their nesting grounds.  Apparently if you come by near dusk, you can see hundreds of them coming in from the ocean for the evening.  Daily commute I guess.  

We were anxious to get on our way though, so continued the drive towards the Moeraki Boulders.  These so far were my most favorite site!  Huge perfectly round boulders along the shore tossed about like a giant's handful of marbles.  It had been raining on and off during the day, but it cleared up just in time to play on these huge rocks.  Liz, we must come back here for some Acro shots :)

We decided to push on to the south part of the island and finally arrived in Te Anau around 11pm, after 8hrs of driving--nearly 400miles.  We pulled into the camp ground, plugged in, drank some Sav Blanc, then crashed out on our ultra-plush-ish bed for the night!