A good day out but quite a few kilometres in our pocket

Members of the All Blacks ready for a nights action before the start of the Rugby '7's in Wellington

We checked out of the ‘Aspen on King Motel’ this morning and had a good chat with David the owner of the Motel, which is very nice and a good place to stay, to decide which route we will take to Oamaru.

We decided, following David’s advise to take a big loop which would take us partly back the way we came to Timaru via Pleasant Point, Albury and Fairlie so that we could head in the general direction of Mount Cook and Lake Takepo

The journey at first was through flat pastureland and it slowly got more interesting with the hills getting larger and generally growing in to mountains.

We arrived at Lake Tekepo and spent a little while looking at the Church and also the nearby statue. The Church was lovely and constructed partly of timber brought in from the UK but carved locally. It is a multi denominational Church so whatever religion you fancy you can pray here.

We then departed for Twizel and passed by Lake Pukaki en-route and there we took some photos with Mount Cook in the background, we will be visiting Mount Cook later in our tour. We stopped for lunch in Twizel a nice little town where we shall return in the next few weeks.

We had also been informed of some Clay Caves which we were recommended to see. They were indeed quite impressive. They were on private land, so you are requested to pay a small fee and remember to close the gates behind you to stop the animals from escaping.

We then headed South East and passed by some beautiful lakes such as Lake Benmore, Lake Aviemore and Lake Waitaki.

As the traffic level was very low and the roads were fairly straight and fast we were able to use the cruise control and let the car do the driving.

We thought we would head in to town for something to eat tonight rather than do in-house cooking. The Motel tonight is not as good as last night and although they say it’s quiet on their Motel spiel it’s actually a bit noisy at the moment. Let’s see how noisy it is later.