Sunday, February 24, 2013

From the Commodore - Day 10

Slept til 6 when my bladder woke me then back to bed to doze a little more.  Dad was up at 8 and finished off his porridge.  I got up at 8:30 and got beaten to the one shower so ate breakfast.  Tricky as the toaster was broken but found a working one.  A lot of the hostels have defective appliances, tonight it was the stove which a German lady warned us about so we didn’t spend hours waiting for it to heat up as she did.  After breakfast a shower and making lunches we headed off at 10.

We were leaving and Dad found a craft mall so went in and bought myself a pair of fleece slippers, merino wool t shirt which feels lovely and looks good, a shell necklace made of abalone and a cream which was supposed to stop the bug bites itching.  Didn’t work too well but helped a bit.  Also, got a DVD postcard for a dollar and hope it has some of the places we’ve been as neither my camera or dad’s is doing the best job of taking photos.  Sam, we need your camera here.

After the craft shop we headed to the conservation centre to find out about the penguins.  Wrong time of year.  Dad lucked out when he saw them 8 years ago.  Then we drove around a while searching for gas.  At $2.25 a litre it’s climbing.  Gassed up and headed North and stopped to take pictures of the Haast River bridge at the estuary end of the river.  Headed up to ? for a walk along the river to see the old giant trees called Dinosaur trees because they were here 100 million years ago.  Then did the dune walk to the lake and saw another piece of disappearing flora.  The whole area (2.6 million hectares) is a Unesco World Heritage Site.  Didn’t see anyone  but heard lots of bird song and a huge buzz of insect noise sounding a bit like crickets.

Sunny and hot.

Drove out to Knight’s Point viewpoint and searched the ocean for sea life but couldn’t spot anyone at 1 pm.  Ate lunch in our car as all the picnic tables full.  Very crowded and busy on this highway.  Drove to a salmon ‘hobby’ farm and had a chocolate milk while dad had cake and a coffee to keep awake.

 We’ve run out of cash.  I tried to flag it when we were near a bank a couple of days ago but dad was sure we had lots.  Now if they won’t take a credit card we’re hooped.  We spent the last of our cash on gas as their machine was down.  He thought I had money but he’d needed it earlier and spent it so we have to see if we can find a bank tomorrow. 

Drove to Fox Glacier and I fell asleep in the car.  Not sleeping well.  Arrived at 4, checked in and I had a nap til 7.  Slept poorly as we’re right above the kitchen and it was noisy.  Still is even though it’s 10 pm.  Good thing I have ear plugs.  Dad made his special hash for dinner, diced chicken, tomato paste, canned corn and rice.  It was okay.  I find the tomato paste a bit too acidy but he insists on putting it in every dish.  Funny as he hates meat sauce which is just beef with tomato sauce. 

Hope to go on a glacier tour tomorrow so I’d best go to sleep

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