When we told a local yesterday in Dunedin that our next stop was Timaru and he thought it was an odd stop for a cruise ship, particularly on a Sunday. He’s correct – It’s a small town with not that many “sites” and all the stores are closed on Sunday! Fortunately the Visitor Center included a table with suggestions of activities for the short day (we had to be back on the boat by 2:30).

The one tour I was interested in wasn’t available but Dirk liked the idea of visiting a small town with antique working trains and a train museum. We paid our money and joined another couple and their son in Cliff’s (our tour director’s) van and headed to the town of Point Pleasant. We enjoyed getting out of town and seeing farmlands and small businesses and different looking landscapes. One curiosity – why so many hedges along roads, between houses, etc. Turns out it gets very windy around the area and people use large hedges to protect properties and farm land.

After arriving and before experiencing the train museum we had time to walk though their outdoor market and enjoy conversations with some of the locals, particularly a grandpa that loved making wooden puzzles.

When it was time we moved to the Train Stop and were able to experience the 3 types of cars that had been refurbished in their original styles – I felt fancy in the First Class lounge. We traveled to the museum and enjoyed there many exhibits.

The train, which originally covered 50 miles or more, now went about 2-3 miles along the road to the small train museum for us to explore.

The museum also included a old Model T truck engine – one of two that were used in the area. The Model T Truck engines were converted to run on the narrow gauge rails to accommodate short distance runs. I leaned that the one we rode in was built from scratch using the specifications for original 1900’s Model T – amazing dedication to details. We rode that back to the town and explored the train stop museum a little more before heading back to Timaru.

We asked Cliff to drop us off near the local Rose Garden we had seen form a distance earlier and enjoyed looking and smelling some of the 100’s of types of roses in the large and elegant rose garden.

Tomorrow we will visit our last stop on New Zealand’s South Island – Christchurch – a large city that is still recovering from a horrible earthquake in 2011, but has much to see.