So we were standing at the street again waiting for someone to pick us up. Our first lift brought us to Omarama. The second one was a Kiwi, who made several stops during his drive, because apparently he had fun in being our tourist guide. So we could see the biggest earth dam of the southern hemisphere at Lake Benmore. Apparently, our driver told us a very funny story about the dam. Around 1 ½ years ago a, let’s say it like this, really amorous couple took a boat to drive over the lake. They were probably busy with more important (!!!) things than navigating to boat and that’s why they fall down the dam. Lucky enough they were not insured but the boat was demolished and they had to pay a quite high fine. Unfortunately, he didn’t go to Oamaru, but to Timaru and that’s why he dropped us off in a small village named Kowra. And there we were waiting and waiting and waiting, for 1.5 hours until finally a Chinese couple picked us up. They were really nice and were on their way from Queenstown to Christchurch. But we very often heard that 80% of the bad car accidents around Queenstown were caused by tourists (mainly Chinese), so we were a bit sceptic. On the other hand we didn’t have a choice so we jumped in. Let’s say it like that, obviously we survived otherwise writing would be a bit difficult. But his way of driving was quite adventurous and that’s all we say about that.
He was really kind and drove us almost in front of the place of our couchsurfing host, our first one in New Zealand. Alex accepted our request although he wasn’t at home, but he told us his flatmates would be ok with hosting us. We realized quite fast why, the house was completely filled up with couchsurfers (10 inclusive the two of us). Dave, Alex’ representative didn’t know that we were arriving and accommodated us quickly in Alex’ empty room. The other couchsurfers were a funny mixture of all parts of the world, 3 Canadian girls, 3 American girls, a German couple and the two of us. The next day, two German girls arrived, but that time the Americans and the other couple were gone. We got along quite well with the Canadians and exchanged some hints, the Americans helped us planning our travel through the States. Our Hungarians in Twizel gave us the hint that Megabus opened its summer sale and offers lots of cheap bus tickets. After a bit of research we found bus tickets for Washington – Philadelphia – New York – Boston, all with a stopover of a few days, for believe it or not 9.50$ per person for the whole distances. After having done that, we had a look at Oamaru, which to be honest isn’t a lot. There is a nice old part of town and actually the most important thing, penguins. We tried to see yellow-eyed penguins that arrive 2-3 hours before sunset on the beach in order to feed their kids, and we could see ONE. While wandering around we almost fell over a seal that was laying in our way (you can find them really everywhere).
After a nice evening with everyone of the flatshare, we made our way to Dunedin the next day. We actually wanted to visit the Moeraki Boulders in Oamaru, but got to know that they are half way to Dunedin. That’s why we asked our first lift to drop us off there and heavily loaded we wandered along the beach having a look at rocks, which lie almost perfectly globular on the beach. Really stunning what nature can do. We continued our way to Dunedin to our next HelpX family, but this is another story.