Nick’s world tour

Dunedin, I learned, is Scottish for Edinburgh. In tune with it’s namesake, it suddenly got cool and windy, and then rained a lot. It was supposed to be a copy of the original, but they realised the terrain is different, and the river is in a different place so it didn’t quite workout as planned. As close as they got are similar street names. Dunedin is a university city, but as it’s the summer holiday is relatively quiet.
 
I stayed at Stafford Gables, which is advertised as having accommodation for 66 guests, 1 cat and 3 ghosts. It’s a beautiful old black and white building and started it’s life as a private hotel and then became a hospital, before becoming a rather cheap accommodation option in recent years.
Whilst here I took a trip out to the Otago peninsular. I remembered seeing photos of this in the airline magazine on the way over, one of the more tenuous reasons I’ve had for visiting a place. It’s home to the only mainlaind colony of Royal Albatross (3.3m wingspan), rare Hooker Sealions (3m long, 40kg in weight and with a lifespan of 25 years), and NZ fur seals. The rarest is the yellow eyed penguin, or Hoiho, which means noise shouter. A very appropriate name as we found out. They return from the sea after a hard days fishing, stand still with their wings up to cool down (you can see the blush under here and on their feet) before returning to their nests high on the grassy cliffs to feed their furry chicks. Very rare, there are only 5000-6000 species in the world, and apparently many simply drop dead of stress induced heart attacks after human encounters. We’re good, and stay quietly in the hides, camera flashes switched off. A pretty good way to spend an evening.

There’s a Cadbury World here, but as the childhood memories of Bourneville town and the people driving round in Creme Egg cars aren’t matched here, we decide to go for a more grown up trip to the Speights Brewery. Home to the “Pride of the South” brew, and the appalling Southern Man cowboy style adverts, it’s an interesting tour, and the highlight of course is the tasting of all their brews at the end. Complete with tasting notes, and the chance for those of us usually on the other side of the bar to serve ourselves.
Apart from being the 5th biggest city in the world (by area, most of which is actually farmland) it also has the steepest street in the world. With a gradient of 1 in 2.66, I climbed to the top just to prove how tiring it was.

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