Dunedin reminds me of Scotland. The names of the streets are all Scottish, the people have a Scottish accent and the weather seems to be nice but the wind is terrible. Despite these nice things Dunedin is a tourist region. You can do everything you like – if you have and if you are willing to spend enough money.
We and E.’s friend A. went for a day trip to Otago Peninsula. There we wanted to visit the penguin and albatross colony – a tourist trap! They wanted to charge us $45 each! Hey, we had penguins and seals for free in Moeraki! We don’t need yours! No, thanks!
We decided to visit Larnach Castle instead, the only castle in New Zealand, but the same there, $27 to visit the castle and I don’t remember how much they wanted for the gardens. Daylight robbery!
We went on and found a nice little beach with some seals on it. There you are! Don’t need your tourist stuff!
The round trip with Harry turned out to be wonderful again. We had astonishing views to Dunedin and the surrounding landscape and found some nice beaches without many tourists. At one beach we climbed on some rocks to see if there was a way to another beach. There wasn’t, so we had to go back. On our way back, there was a big lazy seal laying on the beach. All the warning signs say „don’t go between a seal and the water“ but the tide was coming in and we had to get back somehow. What to do? I went first and caught a good moment and hid behind a rock. The others waited, discussed the opportunities and just ran. The seal didn’t mind at all he only moved his head to look and pooped! Yes he pooped. A. claimed later you could even see it in the picture I took.
Tired of the day’s adventures we went back to the hostel to get some beer and to decide what to do in the evening. We agreed to meet at 9 pm to have some drinks in the hostel and later go out to a pub.
For dinner we had sweetcorn. You put it into the microwave for about three minutes, butter and salt on it – awesome! Thank you E. you probably created a new sweetcorn junkie!
When A. came round, we had improvised Cuba Libre – rum, coke, lime, only the ice cubes were missing, but it works very well without… Soon we began to tell jokes and astonishingly I could understand most of them and better could even tell one or two by myself. Wow, good day today.
Later we ended up in a pub or club or whatever, had a few more drinks, danced, talked and eventually went tired and happy home.
For the checkout we cheated a bit. We gave the key back in time, so we got our deposit back, but we had still things in the now unlocked room. After breakfast we went to A.’s place to exchange the pictures of the day before and talk for a while. We said farewell and we continued our way south, detecting that the gas price had risen to $2.07. Last week it was $1.99. Bad timing, but so what? Need to work sometime anyway, doesn’t matter if it will be a few days earlier!
Our first stop today was at McLean Waterfalls. We walked around 20 min through a magic forest with big mossy trees. In contrast to the hot sun it was cool, almost cold, under the trees next to the gurgling little river. Arriving at the falls we were luckily the only tourists there, I took some good pictures, had an apple, enjoyed the fresh air and the murmuring of the waterfall. Too bad – shortly thereafter there were bunches of tourists, like a bus had stopped and dropped them off. It proved to be true as we later found out, there was indeed a tour bus. We didn’t like the now crowded place anymore and fled back to Harry and continued on our way.
Our hostel for tonight had only four rooms without any keys available and you had to check in via phone. A completely different experience compared to the big hostels in the cities but what would you expect this far south in a tiny little village with around five houses? Of course there was no supermarket and of course we hadn’t bought the needed bread and eggs earlier. Asking for an available shop, we were told to drive to a camping area where there would be a dairy. The promised shop turned out to be the reception for the camping area too. We spent $5.90 (!) for four eggs and one loaf of frozen bread!
After dinner, sweetcorn again, we went to a beach to watch the penguins coming back from hunting in the evening. The beach was nice but the penguins, after Moeraki, were not really impressive.
