[New Zealand] Chapter LIX: In which we find out that, even at the antipodes, friends might find you

Our "old friend" Gita is back!

After hitting Samoa when we were there, Cyclone Gita went on a clockwise tour of the South Pacific, narrowly missing Niue, squarely striking Tonga, brushing the southern isles of Fiji, glancing off New

Caledonia, before finally making a U-turn and heading straight at central New Zealand (the southern part of the north island and the northern part of the south island), apparently keen to meet us again --- eleven days later --- in Christchurch.

By the time Gita approached New Zealand from the west on February 19, she was no longer a cyclone, "just" a tropical storm, yet strong enough to indirectly affect us by churning the waters of Akaroa Harbour (on the eastern shore of New Zealand) when we cruised them, as mentioned in the previous chapter. And even though by the time she swept through New Zealand on the night of 20-21 February we had already wisely driven almost 400 kilometres to the south, away from her, we could still well feel her ire, as it rained heavily non-stop on both 20 and 21 February, forcing us to concentrate more on urban sights --- primarily in Oamaru and Dunedin.

But on the 22nd, with Gita finally gone to that place in the afterlife reserved for dissipated cyclones, the sun reappeared, just in time for us to enjoy the more rural aspects of the eastern coast of the south island, on the wild beaches and windswept promontories of the Otago Peninsula and the Catlins Coast.

Accommodations:
- Alannah's Airbnb unit at 916 Brighton Road, Brighton (3 nights; superb)

Photo captions: (a-b) a street in Oamaru; (c-o) Steampunk HQ (a quirky little museum in Oamaru, displaying works of art with a retro-futuristic sci-fi flavour); (p-s) Moeraki boulders; (t-u) Dunedin's train station; (v-w) Dunedin's First Church of Otago; (x-dd) Baldwin street, Dunedin, the world's steepest street; (ee-mm) views of the Otago Peninsula and the surrounding countryside; (nn-yy) sea lions; (zz-aaa) a crested penguin; (bbb-mmm) royal albatrosses (on a Royal Albatross Centre guided tour); (nnn-sss) other sea birds; (ttt-zzz) Nugget Point