Déjà vu

A leisurely start this morning. We skipped the sunrise shoot (the t-shape jetty), and so combined with an early night last night, we got about 9.5 hours sleep and we both feel a lot better for it. Clearly needed.

We had breakfast at the Sandfly Café. I’m glad we had the opportunity to try this place; I’d read that they do good food there and bizarrely, we hadn’t had the chance to try it out on any of our previous five visits to the town. We had coffee, smoothie, toast, muffin and poached eggs and avocado. Another great breakfast.

Heading northeast, we left Te Anau – for the last time? – and drove through some of the places we’re now very familiar with: Mossburn, Riversdale and Gore, where we had a convenience stop. Remember Gore? Andy and I walked to our favourite coffee place in town… that being the one and only coffee place we’ve ever tried in Gore. The rest of the group followed us there, and I thought – too late – that we should have tried to get free flat whites for bringing so many customers in 🙂

We continued on our journey until we got to Balclutha, the ‘big river town’. Whatever that means. We’re here for two nights. So… we got into our room, dropped our bags and went to town. We had lunch at Café 55 – probably the worst lunch we’ve had in NZ. We asked for a cheese roll… this came as a slice of white bread (to Andy’s disgust) with a slice of cheese, all rolled up and grilled. Nutrition value = none. Taste = none. But it was a small lunch as we had a big dinner on the cards so it didn’t matter too much, and the entertainment value was high.

After lunch, we went scouting a location for sunrise. It didn’t work out but it was a great drive down the Otago Peninsula. The light was amazing, and I finally managed to get close to a sheep!

Our ‘we’ve been here before’ story continued when we found out that our sunset shoot was a pier in St Clair… followed by a pizza in the restaurant we went to (for pizza) a few weeks ago. This has become a standard joke on the bus, people jokingly asking if we’ve been ‘here’ before; the answer is invariably ‘yes’. It is unfortunate to go back to so many of the same places, and at the same time it’s great to have the time to explore properly. This trip was meant to be split between the east and west coasts of the South Island, but is now concentrated on the east coast only so repetition is almost inevitable.

The pier and the reflections were awesome. Andy worked on long exposures. I concentrated on graphic b&w images of the esplanade and the stairs.

Tasty pizzas and pinot before our drive back to Balclutha.