Lions Lambs and Lairy Englishmen

There were no penguins or sheep shearing during our Dunedin trip. But there were sea lions (big ones), lambs, rugby and seagull attacks!

The rugby was a lot of fun, even though England v Romania wasn’t really a fair contest. After the first couple of tries most of the crowd stopped watching and kept them selves amused with beer and mexican waves. One lairy, assumably English bloke, even ran on the pitch to keep us entertained. He was aiming for a glorious swan-dive underneath the post but the wet grass got the better of his bare feet and he took a painful looking fall instead. We made our way to the official fan zone in Dunedin’s town hall for the all blacks match, which was packed and pretty atmospheric. I found my self caring way too much about the French. Maybe I am a sucker for the under-dog, but my allegiance will be firmly against France this weekend.

 

We had seen a little bit of the town prior to the match, driving up the worlds tallest street and walking around the town centre. Before that though, we had the delight of playing with some new lambs at Pip’s parents farm. Thanks Pip!

 

Eager to see some more animals we headed to the peninsula the next morning. Unfortunately we were too late to see the penguins… about 5 hours too late I think. But we were taken back by the beast like sea lions that were sprawled across the beach. A little perturbed by the sheer scale of the animals, we walked back from the beach over the dunes. Only to look like whimps later as we saw a jogger casually running in between the sleeping lions.

 

After a walk along the beach it seamed fitting to stop for some fish and chips. The food was nice, the service excellent and the views beautiful. Our peace was soon shattered though by a greedy seagull.

 We had seen it sneaking around, eyeing up our left overs. Or at least we thought he was waiting for left overs, but it turned out the seagull was not that patient. From nowhere he swooped for our fish fillets! Tom was brave enough to fend it off with a butter knife and it seemed attack was the best form of defence as Ambre chased it off, protecting her plate of chips as if it were a freshly baked baguette.

That’s the World Cup done for us, we will be watching the rest of the competition from the comfort of a sofa, or possibly a rowdy bar. It was back to Wanaka for the final week of the ski season. We had some slush, some sun, and were even treated to a little bit of fresh snow on the final day. Unlike last year, there wasn’t a single hospital visit and no-one needed to be helicoptered off the mountain.

 

There are still some mountains open, but I think it’s about time I saw some more of New Zealand so we’ve planned a couple of trips and yesterday Ambre finally got me to revisit Puzzling World. One of my finest achievements to date was completing the difficult route around the maze in under 1 hour 15 minutes. Most of our friends have left or will be leaving soon, so the next few weeks in Wanaka will be nice and relaxed. I should have evened out the goggle tan in no time and be ready for another winter soon enough.