After visiting the blue penguin sanctuary in Oamaru, we continued our drive south to a small campsite in Portobello, 20 minutes outside of Dunedin on the Ortega Peninsula. It was a beautiful little RV park with a big kitchen, laundry facilities, and hot showers.
We went for a short evening walk around the tiny town of Portobello, and then started our laundry before making a tasty brinner (breakfast-dinner). After that we took advantage of the trailer park wifi and watched a movie on Netflix.
The next morning we ate some leftover “brinner” for breakfast (mmmmmm), had a hot shower and then decided to do a quick local hike before hitting the road again.
Our expectations were pretty low for the Harbour Cone track, which turned out to be an extinct volcano. The start of the hike was quite steep following a fence line, before opening up to an equally steep sheep pasture on the hillside.
As we zig-zagged up the hill we were able to admire the many sheep on the hill, while at the same time marking sure we didn’t step in any of the many fresh sheep patties.
Once we reached the top we were treated to some spectacular views of not just Portobello, but of a near by shipping port, and towards the Pacific Ocean a beautiful estuary.
We then hopped into our Maui RV, and drove to Gore, NZ to the Dolamore Park municipal campground. It was a large, beautiful and inexpensive camping area that we had basically to our own. That said there was no cellular service and the campground did not have any wifi that we could take advantage of.
We hiked Dolamore Loop Track which ended up with a beautiful view of the valley and near by farms. At the lookout at the top of the loop we finally got some cell reception, so I called my mother to check in and see how she was doing back in Canada.
While we still had some cell service we called the Maui RV support people to let them know we had a couple of kitchen drawers that kept opening when we went around corners, and made an appointment to stop in at their Queenstown location to get the drawers fixed up.
When we arrived back from our hike, we made some dinner, showered, cleaned up, and then watched a downloaded movie, and planned our drive to to Queensland before heading to bed.