Getting Back to Nature

  Dunedin, New Zealand
Thursday, March 29, 2007

Dunedin is the second largest city after Christchurch on the South Island. This is mostly thanks to the University. Dunedin earns its spot on the tourist trail with the Otago Peninsula, the Speights brewery, the world's steepest street and various other sites around town. Since we arrived in the afternoon we did a tour of the Speights Brewery first. This was Julius and mines third or fourth brewery tour (I have lost count). It was a little less flashy than some of the others but it reiterated the brewing steps. We should start home brewing when we get home. They had the obligatory free beer samples at the end. This is, of course, what attracts most people who do these tours. Unlike the other tours that limited the beers, this tour had all-you-can-drink for a half hour. It let us try all six beers on tap a few times so that was nice.
Otago Peninsula is a wildlife conservation area that is home to lots of sea birds, seals and sea lions. It also has the only mainland albatross nesting site in the world. You pay a pretty penny to see the albatross nesting site (over $30 each) so we chose to stay in the center and learn about them from the informational displays. 

Seagulls are everywhere!

They just had the 500th chick born since the center opened and to celebrate they set up a live-cam at the chicks nest. So, we got to see the fuzzy guy on the big screen tv. All of you can check him out over the web.

The parents were all out feeding for the day (another reason we skipped the tour) but the models of them at the center were amazing. These are enormous birds with a wing span of over 9 1/2 feet. If they get in a good current they can fly over 115 km per hour.

We went to a nearby beach and saw a number of seals, sea lions and seagulls for free. 

Seals on the Peninsula

They didn't seem bothered at all by the tourists snapping their photo. In fact, some seemed comatose. The winds were howling but they hardly noticed.

Mom spent most of our time in the car knitting so she had to make a stop in one of the peninsula's yarn shops. This required a drive into the foggy hills with narrow roads and hairpin turns. Dad did not enjoy this. We found one place on a remote farm with hand spun wool yarn sheered from their own sheep. All of the hats, sweaters and blankets were knitted by the wife on the farm and her neighbors. The skeins of yarn were lovely and dirt cheap so we bought a lot. She said that if we came yesterday we could have watched the lambs get their first sheering. She said it is funny to watch because they look around around at their friends afterward like "who are you?"

Before heading out of town we had to make the obligatory stop to the "world's steepest street", credited in the Guiness book of world records and everything. After driving up and down we concluded that Queen Anne Hill in Seattle definitely has to have steeper streets than this one. We need to contest their claim.

We were off to drive across the country to the west coast. NZ is a skinny country so the drive takes about 5 hours. Sheep were everywhere- on all the hills and in all the semi trucks zooming by. We are still fresh enough to the country to find the sheep very adorable and photo-worthy. Unfortunately they are shy and skittish so we usually ended up with photos of their rear ends as they were running away.

Mom and Dad Rolling our new Wool Yarn

Besides sheep, the other noteworthy thing on this drive was the "Presidential Highway", the stretch of highway between Clinton and it's neighboring town Gore. Something noteworthy. They probably wouldn't put up a special sign if the towns were called Cheney and Bush. They are to polite to say how much they dislike our president but we know they do.

We had to drive a dirt road for 30 km at one point when all traffic was detoured off a stretch of highway with a fatal accident. It was an American motorcyclist killed so we assumed that he was on the wrong side of the road. Later we found out he was trying to pass on a blind corner, something just as fatal but unfortunately less sympathetic to the masses. The dirt road led to three dings in the windshield from sheep-filled semis and tourist-filled buses zooming in the opposite direction. It was a relief to finally arrive in Te Anau.