Traveling to Oamaru

Thursday morning we packed up and headed to the airport. We checked in at a central kiosk and hefted our bags onto an adjacent scale only to discover that one of our bags was over 25 kg. The sign declared that bags over 25 kg simply WOULDN’T GO! Needless to say, we did a little shifting of items between bags.

The domestic small airport atmosphere is much more relaxed here than in the States. Scanning happens at the gate and there is no removal of shoes or even coats if not needed. We did two short hops to Christchurch and then to Dunedin (unfortunate airport code DUD). Bruce, the apparently well known Oamaru shuttle guy, met us with a sign and loaded us up. We proceeded to meander around in Dunedin picking up several others and then dropping them off at their destinations as we neared Oamaru. We arrived some 3 hours later at the medical practice, dark and locked, in downtown Oamaru. Fortunately, a quick phone call brought Chris Rohrbach , one of the docs (originally from Germany) , running down the block from where he had been waiting. Awkwardly, we discovered that the shuttle ride had not been prepaid as we expected and we didn’t have enough cash (no credit cards accepted)! Bruce said we could leave the money in an envelope at the clinic with his name on it and he would swing by later and pick it up--small town, huh? Chris then loaded us into “our” car and drove us to his house out in the country for a home cooked dinner--yeah! There we met his wife Dagmar, 3 year old daughter Sophie, 3 month old son Jacob, Pia the au pare, a German friend Susan and her 6 month old daughter Fannie there for a long visit, and American friends Bob and Linda from Idaho who live in Oamaru part of the year. We felt a tad overwhelmed but also beautifully welcomed.

After a hearty dinner, we followed Chris (Mark’s first time to drive) to our compact, two bedroom, many windowed, beach house in Kakanui, an area south of town. We met our neighbor and landlord Dave (his wife Claire works at the medical clinic) who showed us around the house and went home to get us a coffee press (“I drink gobs of tea every day, myself”) and fresh goat’s milk for the morning--to use with our pilfered instant coffee packets and the last of our bag of bran with sultanas (raisins). We can see the ocean from our little house. Dave’s few sheep and chickens are in the small fields outside our windows.