June 11, 2017 – Whitestone Cheese and Bushy Beach

Our alarm is set for eight but we’re both awake before 5:30, so we turn on the light and play with our photos.  Today is check-out day, so after our breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and toast (or chocolate muffin!) we strip our beds, pack, and hit the road.  We’re driving several hours south to a “lodge” an hour or so north of Dunedin.  The snow-covered mountains run along side us and tantalize with their beauty.  Very hard to shoot them from the wrong side of a moving car!  Occasionally, too, there are trees wearing their autumn foliage, and large river beds with only a trickle of water running through them.

Rucksacker Backpacker Hostel

Putting the cart before the horse!

Early in the day we stop for our first gas fill up.  The pumps are not equipped to take credit cards, so you have to pump and then go inside to pay.  Our 91 octane gas cost 1.989 per liter! 

We had planned to stop for a late lunch at the Riverstone Restaurant, because it had been recommended;  but we needed a pit stop first.  It made sense to stop at a McDonalds so as to see what local delicacies had been added to the standard international menu!  They have chocolate pies and real café with specialty coffees and teas and bakery delights and Georgie Pies which are flaky pastry filled with either steak and cheese or eggs and bacon.  Since our eggs have long since vanished, we share a Georgie pie and each have a mochachino (or something!  I don’t know!).

Back on the road and after looking at the Riverstone’s menu we decide that maybe we don’t need to stop there after all!  There are better ways to use our time and money – and, in fact, we find one!  The Whitestone Cheese Company offers tastings!  We get six different cheeses to sample for $14.50 (NZD).  They are arranged in order from mild to strong and each of them is a medal winner.  We start with brie and progress through creamy Havarti, aged Airedale (which I’d never heard of!), Vintage Five Forks which is made from a blend of cow and goat milk, Mt. Kyeburn (another new one), and end with vintage Windsor blue.  Each is better than the last, although the Havarti, Five Forks, and vintage Windsor blue are our favorites!  Unhappily they don’t ship to the United States!  But we can buy some now for nibbling on the road and there might be some for sale in Nelson or Christchurch just before we’re heading home!  I’m really in love with the blue which is melt-in-your-mouth creamy except for when it is crunchy!  And the Five Forks is unlike any cheese I’ve ever tasted before – in a good way!!  This was much better than another restaurant!

Next stop – Bushy Beach.  There is a colony of yellow-eyed penguins that live here and if you are lucky, and very quiet, you might see one come ashore in the last couple of hours before dark.  We arrive around three and sunset is a bit after five, so our timing should be good.  Where wild life is concerned, one must be very patient.  That’s how we saw the condor fly and the kiwi emerge!  It’s around 4:30 when one tiny little guy hops out of the surf and strolls up the beach to the bushes.  He's really far away;  but we see him!  About fifteen minutes later we see a seal!  And just as the sun is setting there are five more penguins!  Three come out of the bushes to greet two more coming in from the Pacific Ocean!  Wow!  We saw seven penguins and a seal!  Many times people don’t see anything!  Even today we saw half a dozen people come and go without seeing a single critter!  And to top it off, the sunset is a blaze of color!  What a great day!

Steampunk Headwuarters!

Oooo!  There he is!!

And a seal, too!

Away he goes!

And five more - and a sea gull!

Now all we have to do is find the Riverside Haven Lodge.  In the dark.  There is only one road, State Highway 1, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.  Well, that proves untrue.  After passing through two more towns than we expected to, we turn around and head back the way we came.  We give in and call. (Thanks, Verizon, for the international plan!) We try the lady’s directions, give up, and call again.  And turn around again.  Finally we spot her standing by the drive with a torch in her hand to wave us down!  It would have been really helpful if their little sign by the side of the road had a light on it!  It’s pretty darn dark out here in the hinterlands!

We have a large room with one kind size bed and bunk beds.  Luckily I’m pretty little, so it’s not a problem.  We are an outdoor walk from the bathrooms, the showers, and the kitchen and common room.  And I think it’s below freezing out there!  But there is an electric radiator and we plug that in and promise ourselves not to have to go outside again until morning!

We have PBJs with apples and tzatziki-flavored chips for dinner, investigate the things we want to do in Dunedin, and download our pictures.  There aren’t really enough plugs;  but there is wifi and we finagle a way to charge the most necessary devices.  Marilyn crashes around 8:30 while I plug away at the blog.  I hope to be in bed by ten and our alarm is set for 8:00!  We should be up way before that and on our way further south (into the cold)