well i’m on my way…

Supposedly.  I keep on hearing all these random facts and just realized that I’ve been told that ‘this is the biggest, longest, tallest, most, farthest, etc’ for most of the things I’ve seen.  Who’s counting?  Who can actually translate that?  Really.  Some people must think tourists are pretty stupid.  Anywhoo, enough of my rant. 

My first full day in Dunedin I set out to climb the steepest street in the world.  (Really?)  Anyway, I’m here and had to do it.  I walked the hour to the street, walked up it, wasn’t as hard as I anticipated, took a celebratory photo at the top, and walked back down.  If I wasn’t talking to the people I met at the top on the way down I’m sure I would have noticed that the walk down was much harder…I walked through the Botannical Gardens on my way back into town.  Botannical Gardens are great.  It seems every city, and even larger towns, have one.  I will definately have to check out the Chicago version when I get home. 

That night, my friend Naomi I met on the houseboat met me at the hostel.  She rented a car and we’re going to explore the southland together.  She likes to travel like I do, really see a place, and there’s no language barrier as she’s Canadian.  I don’t feel the reserves about traveling with her as I did with Matheiu and even Cameron. 

The next day, we got up early to check out the sights.  We drove into town, which took longer than it would have to walk, but it was fun.  Naomi rented a manual (thank god, I don’t have to drive) and is still a bit rusty on it herself.  She stalled at nearly every light, had a hard time trucking up the steep hills, and yelled at the car while I laughed, causing her to laugh and lose concentration…Don’t worry (I’m not), she’s a good driver, but she was a little rusty having just woken up and it had been a while since she’d driven stick.

We went to the Settlers Museum, which was just another museum until we walked into a room with photos of many of the settlers when they arrived in the 1850s and 60s.  It was incredible.  I looked into all the faces and spent a lot of time in there.  The temperature seemed a bit lower than in the other rooms of the museum, and the people seemed to be staring me right in the eyes, and it was just so fascinating.  All these people-who are they?  What are their stories?  What was it like-the journey here, the arrival, the beginnings of their new lives?  

We went to the Cadbury factory after that and got a rushed tour of the place–the coolest part was all the free chocolate, including Crunchies (my favorite).  At the end of the tour we saw the ‘only chocolate drop in the Southern Hemisphere-no actually the world’ of a liquid ton of chocolate.  Give me a break.  But you know it smelled soooo good in there!

After indulging in chocolate, Naomi wanted to get out of the city and head to the peninsula.  I was very happy to be by the sea-something we’re both mesmerized by.  We drove along windy roads along the coast-no guardrails between the car and the sea and I learned that our car insurace covers everything-except we can’t ‘submerge the vehicle’.  

We got to the carpark where you can see penguins and other wildlife and started following the trail.  We first walked through some sheep fields, which I thought was stunning because you could see the sea behind it.  We walked some more down some steps and the ocean opened up practically beneath our feet.  Well, actually, the sand dunes started falling beneath our feet and we had to almost run down the steep slopes to keep from falling with the sand-but we were heading toward the beach which we both seemed to do with our arms outstretched.  

The waves were magnificent and we stared at them a while in wonder but noticed a group of people at the end of the beach, probably waiting for the penguins to come in.  We started heading toward them but stopped abrubtly when we noticed seals and sea lions in our path, just lazing about on the beach.  One was ‘striking a pose’ for us and the others were smelling eachother while basking in the sun.  We watched them for a while while I wondered how I could ever visit a zoo again.

After we got bored of watching the seals lie there, we walked some more, and ran into more guys, definately passed out.  I got as close as I dared until the seal opened his eyes and let out a big yawn.  Perfect photo!  When he started to move I scurried away and left him in peace.  We headed toward the penguin colony and met a DOC (department of conservation) guy, who was warning people where not to sit, and that the penguins are molting now, get sick during that time, and don’t really go out to sea, therefore they don’t come in for us to view.  There was one really sick guy who set up his camp in a very visible area, so he showed us the penguin.  He reminded Naomi and I of the penguins in Happy Feet, namely the ‘king’ with the six-pack rings stuck around his neck.  Poor lil guy!

We watched the sea and noticed that down the beach the seals were playing.  We were both suprised at how quickly they were running-that something that was being so lazy before could move at such a speed!  They ran back and fourth with eachother and splashed about in the waves, just playing.  It was too cool.  I could hear my Mother’s voice exclaiming ‘Sealers!’ in my head. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 4:24 pm and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.