Destination #2: Timaru*

After consulting our map Jacob and I decided to make our second stop in Timaru. We had no real reasoning behind this, except that it was about halfway between Akaroa and Dunedin (where we hoped to get to the following day). But, while we had real reason for it, I'm really glad that we chose it for our next stop.

Timaru was refereed to as "The Heart of the South Island", and it really was an awesome place to stop on a good-weathered spring day.


After finding a holiday park for the night, we headed over to Caroline Bay. The guidebook that my good friend Holly gave me said that it was a must see, and they were right. The park was HUGE and had everything from a rose garden to modern art to an aviary to a sandy beach! It was fantastic.

I love that in the background of this sandy beach there are snow capped peaks.... just a hint of the variety of climates we're going to see...

Jacob met a new friend in the aviary...



I swear he spent about 15 minutes trying to get this bird to talk to him. And, eventually we did get a "hello" or two.

After checking out the park we headed out to get some dinner. Little did we know that on a Saturday evening NO ONE would be open! We ran into this same problem when we moved to Canada a couple years back, but it hadn't occurred to me that it would be a problem in NZ, too. Needless to say after a day of driving and then wandering around a park, we were STARVING. Thankfully we found a place just outside of the touristy part of town. We parked in front of this sign, which I found a bit comical. =)


After dinner we headed back to the holiday park and got a good night's sleep!


*Hey! It rhymes! =)