Dunedin and Oamaru...

Dunedin, NZ's third largest city, is supposed to be modelled on Edinburgh. To be fair, it has a bit of a Scottish feel to it, with place names such as Princes Street and Portobello, as well as decidedly overcast and rainy weather, and the fact that everyone here says 'wee' a wee bit too much.

However, that's not to say that Dunedin is a bad place; far from it. The tour of the Speight's brewery here was excellent, with many fine 'craft' beers to sample and a damn fine pub next door where me and Clare shared the biggest ploughman's lunch you've ever seen, including a whole loaf of fancy-looking white and brown bread. This bad boy made the portions in the US look rather paltry by comparison.

However, the chocolate factory tour was somewhat of a disappointment. Firstly, there didn't actually appear to be any chocolate making going on when we visited, secondly, the 'free samples' we got were mainly of odd things we didn't recognise like some weird banana chocolate. Thirdly, the chocolate in the shop was actually dearer than that sold in the supermarket next door, and fourthly (is that a word?) and most importantly, THERE WERE NO OOMPA-LOOMPAS TO BE SEEN ANYWHERE! NOT EVEN ONE!

Oh well, you win some you lose some I guess. We took a trip out to the Otago Peninsula, famed for its wildlife and fantastic scenery, both of which we found in abundance. My dear old friend Grifter would probably describe the place as having a certain 'bucolic splendour', which would seem to be rather appropriate.

While we were in Dunedin, we also took the time to visit Baldwin Street, AKA the worlds' steepest street. After frog-marching Clare to the top, we waited to see if any of the visitors arriving at the bottom would drive their cars up, but they didn't. It's that steep. The only person we saw driving up was an old fella in a clapped-out old car, who lived at the house at the top. Fair play to him.

We then made our may on to Oamaru, known as 'The Whitestone City' due to it's many fine old buildings (built in Victorian Italianate, Venetian Renaissance and Venetian Palazzo styles amongst others, architecture buffs), which is all rather nice. The clock tower on the main street here also looks just like the one on Welshpool High Street too. Spooky.

We had a stroll out to Bushy Beach yesterday (!), home to a small colony of Yellow-Eyed Penguins. After waiting in a cold and windy hide for an hour yesterday evening, one of the shy little critters stumbled onto the beach, only to spot us, and head straight back into the water again. We tried to 'hide' a bit more in our hide, and the little chap finally built up the courage to come out of the sea and waddle back to his nest in the cliffs. All very cute and worth the wait.

Anyways, tonight we head back to Christchurch for our Flight to Auckland on the North Island. More from there.

-Si