Wainono Lagoon

Sunday was a carol service at church. The community choir sang, which was really nice. Much nicer than if the 10 or so regular attenders had done the singing along! It was so nice to hear the traditional readings and sing Christmas carols, although the words are a bit different on some of them. We had to watch our hymnals!

During the afternoon we took off toward Timaru for a little exercise. We believed, from the description, that the Wainono Lagoon track would be flat and easy. It was mostly flat, but not easy because it was very rocky! Our track was along a freshwater lagoon. When we decided to turn around, we climbed up the rock dunes to be face to face with the Pacific Ocean! I was surprised how the dunes muffled the sound of the ocean. We made our way back toward the car for a while on the beach side, but it was such slow, hard work that we switched back to the lagoon side!

Tomorrow and Wednesday I try to get ahead on some work because Ruben has Thursday and Friday off from the clinic. Not so good for our dwindling bank account, but good for sightseeing. I am way too cheap to be a good tourist.

We are still having a heatwave in Canterbury Region while the TV news reports on the wildfires in California and the snowstorms on the East Coast of the US.

Lagoon to the left, ocean to the right

On our way back to the highway we encountered a group of calves on the road!

We honked the car horn to move them along. This one (ear tag #194)
kept turning around to look at us like we were the ones in the way.