Meeting family in Tapanui
Travel Location: tapanui,New-Zealand
I can’t believe it’s only five days to Christmas!!! It iscold and has been mostly drizzly/gray while we’ve been on the South Island, but it’s certainly not wintry as we’re used to around Christmas!
We drove a half hour from Gore to tiny Tapanui where my grandmother’s cousin and her husband live. I hadn’t met Brenda and Les before and it was really nice to see them and catch up. Brenda and my dear grandmother had been more like sisters than cousins so it was lovely to talk to someone who had been so close to her. Brenda and Les are amazing: they are both in their 90s but still going very strong and laid on a scrummy lunch for us.
We had planned to stop in Dunedin that night but it didn’t look very nice at all (and the very rude host at the Ramsay Lodge put us right off (definitely don’t stay there – the guy is crazy and swore at us!) so we headed on to Oamaru and stayed the night there instead. I was feeling rather fragile by the time we got there but we found an amazing restaurant called Filadelfio’s and spent the evening there, scoffing the most delicious pizza and sipping yummy vino.
Before hitting the road in the morning, we went for a stroll around the Victorian sea-side town of Oamaru. It’s a really quaint place with one straight main road and a couple of crooked side street with old Victorian-style shops and a market. Oamaru feels quite bare and unsheltered and I didn’t take to it at all. Dean really liked it though and even said that he could see himself living there.
Our next destination was Lake Tekapo and we drove through lots of flat farming country with freshly snow-dusted mountains as our backdrop. We had planned to stop at Twizel for lunch as it had been recommended to us. We’re not sure why though… it’s entirely residentail and so small that we missed it and had to drive back to find it 
) So we ditched the lunch idea and headed on past the mighty Mount Cook, Australiasia’s highest peak at 3755m. Mount Cook was named after James Cook and the Maoris call it Aoraki (Cloud Piercer) after an ancestral deity in Maori mythology.
