Timaru

Timaru

From Kaikoura, we drove on to Timaru, passing through Christchurch, where we exchanged the hire car. Christchurch was something of a novelty in terms of traffic, firstly because there actually was some - quite a lot in fact, made worse by largescale roadworks. And secondly, there was a motorway. A whole three mile stretch of it. No sooner were you on it, there were signs telling you it was coming to an end!

But anyway Timaru. We intentionally include some smaller stops along the way, to see what they're like as well as the more well known destinations, and this was one. It is a very standard small town, but it does have a couple of things to recommend it.

Timaru

One of the main reasons we chose this as a stop off, was the Maori Rock Art. However we didn't research it very well, as we had thought that it was accessible in town and it isn't. Had my back been OK, we would probably have done the trip out to the caves, but I simply wasn't up to the walking involved yet. We did take a look around the exhibition in the i-site, which was quite informative and interesting.

We found one quite nice coffee shop, and a very nice restaurant called The Oxford.

Timaru could have been a place to see the Little Blue Penguins, as there is a colony that lives along the beachfront, but we must have missed them the one night we were there. And then they shut off the tunnel back at dusk, so we had to find a way back along the main road. Which reminds me, watch out for the boy racers in their done up cars.

So Timaru didn't really work out all that well for us in the end, but it was a convenient stopover. And the lady at our BnB was nice - she gave us a free cooked breakfast.