Living in New Zealand: What is There to Do in Oamaru?
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We arrived in Oamaru on a Wednesday evening and it was pretty quiet, with few locals in the street. They were outnumbered by a coachload of Asian tourists who were drifting around. The most obvious attraction in Oamaru is the little blue penguin colony at the end of Friendly Bay (see my earlier post).
Here are some of the other things to do in Oamaru:
1. Spot trains.
2. Walk around the independent shops in the Victorian precinct. There was a building boom between 1875 and 1883 when Oamaru was a busy port, making a lot of money from wool & grain exports and using the local limestone to put up some pretty impressive buildings.
3. Dress up like a Victorian (there was a festival the weekend after we were there in November).
4. Get into the steampunk
5. Drink beer. You can go to the oldest pub in town, The Criterion, which has Emerson beers on tap. Or you can go to Fat Sally’s, which seems to be a Speights Alehouse in disguise, but had cheap beer and a quiz on a Wednesday. Or you can go to our favourite, which was the Scotts Brewery. This was in an old railway shed. The owners had wanted to put the brewery in one of the old Victorian buildings, but they couldn't get insurance for an old stone building.
6. Drink some whiskey. There is an award-winning whiskey company in the old town.
7. Walk along the esplanade and see lots of shags (cormorants) and seals.
8. Walk near the beaches at night and see penguins or you can go and see them at the covered area. They have given the penguins nesting boxes here and they even have their own gardener.
9. Go secondhand shopping, although the op shops are so much more expensive than in Christchurch. There is, however, a really good secondhand store that has well-organised old tools and bric-a-brac, etc, with very fair prices (unlike the very expensive but beautifully organised Hampden store just down the road from Oamaru).
10. Check out the small, but lovely Forrester Gallery, which has some Colin Wheeler paintings as well as other artwork from Oamaru and around.
11. Go to the farmers market on a Sunday morning.
12. Head out to the Waitaki Valley where there are wineries and the famous Whitestone Cheese Company.
13. Enjoy being in a quiet, friendly town.
New Zealand Diary: First Surf of the Season
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I’m a fair weather surfer, but the forecast was for a sunny, 28 degree day yesterday, so I headed out with my bodyboard to South Brighton. As soon as I got through the tunnel, the gorgeous weather was replaced by a chilly sea mist, but I was kitted up and continued on. No one else was in the water (surprise!), so I steeled myself, but it wasn’t bad. And I caught some nice little waves. And I felt better for it, as I always do when I throw myself into the sea and muck around.
Mi Diario en el Pais Vasco: Donostia-San Sebastian: Zurriola
Fui a surfear a playa Zurriola en Octubre porque el agua tuvo 20 grados. Que es mas del mar de Inglaterra en verano.
(I went surfing at Zurriola beach in October because the water was 20 degrees. Which is more than the English sea in summer.)
I Love New Brighton. It Has Many Reasons to Be Cheerful
If I didn't live in Lyttelton, I’d probably choose New Brighton (though I would be worried long-term about the threat of sea level rise and tsunamis). New Brighton has a fabulous long sandy beach and a cool modern pier that stretches out into the Pacific. The council had to do a lot of work to repair it after the earthquake and it is due to open to the public again tomorrow.
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New Brighton also has one of the new electric car charging points that are springing up around Christchurch.
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But the thing I like best about new Brighton is the library. You can sit and work in a chair that looks out over the ocean and there is a cafe below whenever you need a break from that.
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