Kingsgate Dunedin

... The adults are huge with a 3 meter wing span, the chicks are big too and quite fat weighing in at about 12kg. They are about a month away from their first flight which will have them on the wing for three years before they land again to mate!

Then it was down the road to Penguin Place for a gander at the most endangered of Penguins, the Yellow Eyed Penguin. Although there are less ...

... a loud **** and 'Pihau' denoting a stealth ****. While this is certainly a culture worth exploring, we are slightly fearful of the smells to come. We followed our nose to the Sky Tower, which bears a striking resemblance to a certain Sky Dome I know quite well. Its location off of Queen Street is also curious. Emulating Toronto, Auckland? This does not bode well. We're crossing our fingers Dunedin looks nothing like Winnipeg. 

... during which time they do not set foot on land. They have fitted some birds with GPSs and the maximum recorded distance covered by an Albatross in one day was over 2000 kms! The record time from NZ to Chile was a spectacular 9 days. We were lucky to see quite a few up close gliding past the viewing windows. It's hard to appreciate their size without something else in view for a sense of scale like a normal-sized bird. Then we walk over the hills up to a viewing point ...

... none of us really fancied it once we got there, as it was small and dark with no views. It was obvious then that we would have to find our own place to stay and we had picked up a brochure in the Info centre for some new apartments in a disused chapel, allegedly the oldest church building in the city, which is just up the road from where we were. After a couple of calls, first to the agent and then to the owner of the apartments, $300 in cash changed hands and we got the use of ...

Blue Penguins and Royal Albatrosses - The Otago Peninsula Setting off from Mount Cook for the Otago Peninsula we initially travelled at a fairly leisurely pace, stopping now and then to look at places en route. However by mid-afternoon it became obvious that if we were to reach our B and B accommodation in time to have a meal before going out penguin watching we needed to speed up. One curiosity, friends and the guide books said were worth pausing for, were ...

... area" for a sleep and was fairly accepting of the humans looking over him and taking pictures! 2 volunteers from the local conservation society were on hand to supervise the crowds ahead of the penguins arriving. The sensible messages about not using flash, not moving around a lot when the penguins are close by and avoiding the temptation to approach penguins if they come close, were largely obeyed but there were ...

... faehrt. Und schliesslich besitzt es das zweimeist fotografierte Gebaeude der Suedhalbkugel (die Eisenbahnstation). (Ein 10 Euro amazon.de Gutschein fuer denjenigen, der mir als erstes schreibt, welches das meistfotografierte Gebaeude der Suedhalbkugel ist:-). Und es gibt die Cadbury Schokoladenfabrik, die Fuehrungen anbietet, Cadbury Schokolade ist allerdings nicht meine Lieblingsschokolade:-) Ich habe hier noch meine restlichen Zeugnisse von einer ...

... the weather turned quite nasty along the way - lashings of rain and howling winds- though what would you expect as you head closer and closer to the antarctic!!! so thats about it from me. im typing against the clock here as i want to put up some photos aswell. thanks for all the mails from everyone - always great to hear from you all. missing you all lots & lots & will actually be home in about 10 weeks (!!!!!) so cant wait to see lots of you again soon. xx

... we were at the park, we talked to the beer salespeople. We asked them what food was good there and the recommended the sausage & bread. They were pretty adamant that the rest of the options were less than ideal. After buying 2 Speights, we then went to the souvenir guy to see if they had any brochures to explain the rules. He said he didn't but suggested we go to the main office to enquire, which of course we did. Once in the office (no ...

... local curiosity in an otherwise unremarkable suburb. Baldwin Street is not the steepest street in the world, but because the Guinness Book Of Records lists it as such, they've got a little plaque there saying that it is. There was a typo in the records, claiming the gradient to be 1:1.266 (38° or 79%), which would be impossible to walk up. Corrections were made and Guinness still lists it as being the steepest street, but at 35%. Canton Avenue in Pittsburgh is 37 ...