Up Front: The Home Straight
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At the end of the straight after Moeraki you can turn left to Shag Point. After just a few minutes drive there is good viewing of seals and in the evenings yellow eyed penguins coming ashore.
I'm sure others will disagree but I've never seen the point of visiting Akaroa. You have to cover a very winding road twice to visit a seaside village pretty like any other.
I'd spend more time in the Mackenzie country: Mount Cook if the weather's clear, Lake Alexandrina (the southern end - turn right just after Tekapo) is a gem and the clay cliffs before Omarama is New Zealand's version of the South Dakota badlands.
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I'm sure others will disagree but I've never seen the point of visiting Akaroa.
Cheese.
Also there's an old French cemetery over there which is lovely if you like old cemeteries which personally I can be a bit obsessive about. And a Dissenters cemetery for the naughty people.
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We are planning on visiting Akaroa for a continental style lunch and to take in some of the French ambience as well as seeing some of the scenery.
Cheese is good. Might get some to take to my mate in Makikihi. Haven't seen him since September 1978.
Another thanks for the suggestions.
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a seaside village pretty like any other
Perhaps it was just the day I went, which was amazing, but I thought Akaroa was stunningly beautiful. I had a swim at their little beach and took a boat ride to look at the caves around the peninsula... it was lovely.
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Ooh cheese. Evansdale cheese factory, near the turnoff to shag point (south of it I think, over the Kilmogs) is pretty good. On the right as you go south.
And the Speights Tour in Dunedin is reasonably good, particularly if you like tasting beer afterwards.
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They have sense of humour at the chocolate factory. The first thing they do is sit you down in front of a very boring film about Mr Cadbury and just when everyone is thinking 'when is this ever going to end so we can get the free samples' a man comes through the door laden with free samples.
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Thanks Christopher Dempsey. Those were the two cafes in Opotiki we tried out. The upstairs one is called Postcards and not wheelchair accesssible but still very nice if you can walk up the stairs. The Two Fish even has Wellington's Havana coffee. And on PA recommendations we tried the Brown Sugar in Taihape which was very crowded with Wellingtonians and probably other PA readers.
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If you haven’t been to Christchurch for a while it might be worth checking out the cultural precinct from The Cathedral down Worcester Boulevard to the Museum and Botanic gardens. Park in the underground carpark of the Art Gallery off Gloucester street, it’s always half empty. The Art Gallery itself is under pretty dynamic leadership now and well worth a look.
The Arts Centre on the other corner has plenty of galleries, shops and cafes and is the base for the World Buskers festival starting 22nd January with shows each evening outdoors in the North quadrangle.
The Museum is full of the magnificent (the Antarctic collection from the age of exploration) to the bizarre, (Fred and Myrtle Flutey’s paua shell lounge, rebuilt shell by shell from it’s home in Bluff).
Even carry on to the rear of the museum to the old Robert McDougal art gallery where there is a craft glass exhibition on at present showing how well things can be displayed if you have a whole unused gallery to play with.
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Stewart, at the top of the West Coast I enjoyed the Bay House cafe near the seal colony in Westport, and a small detour after the Buller Gorge to the japanese bathhouse at Maruia Springs at the beginning of the Lewis Pass. Watch the ferocious mozzies though.
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I'm going to have to do a bit of cut&paste-ing and save all these good hints so we can take them with us. It's silly, I know, but I hadn't even considered the museum in Ch'ch but I think Bob's swayed me on that, and the conjunction with the buskers festival will certainly feature.
And Maruia Springs might be a good contrast to tyhe only other time I was there, on a motor-bike tour around August (years ago), when we stopped at the pub & spent about 10 minutes running warm water over our hands to thaw them out a bit.
Some of these might be a bit 'iffy' depending on how the driving goes, but I'm keen to see as much as we can.
Thanks again, everyone.
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