Dunedin and Otago Peninsula

The original plan was to use Queenstown as a base to explore the other areas of the South Island, but we haven’t been able to go anywhere else in a while since we have no money (because I am a bum). Steph has also been really itching to get out of town and visit a ‘real city’ (with real shopping), so literally the minute I got some money from river surfing we loaded up and headed southeast to Dunedin. It’s about a 3 and a half our drive, and we didn’t get out of town as early as hoped, but we still opted to make a short detour to visit the Moeraki Boulders - a popular tourist destination,. Basically it’s a bunch of perfectly round boulders just sitting on the beach. We didn’t do much background research, but apparently they formed due to something with the wave cycle and they fell off the cliff as the waves eroded it away. The Maori regarded them as baskets that were on some boat that crashed nearby, with the cliffs and other natural features making up the crashed boat and other parts thereof. You’d think it would be representatives of the crashed boat and baskets, but I don’t think so. I think they are literal. Anyways, that’s all I got for you. We took our obligatory photos and were off on our way.

Dunedin is mainly known as a college town, as it is home to Otago University which is the biggest university on the South Island. The students are on break at the moment, so it was basically just us and the other tourists. Before I gave Steph the chance to do some shopping and explore the city, we spent our first afternoon doing what I had hoped to do - searching for wildlife on the Otago Peninsula. First we drove out to the tip of the peninsula where there is an albatross colony. Now I’ve never seen one, but from what I can tell an albatross is a really big seagull, so right off we weren’t all that determined to see one. We went to a lookout but all we could see were hundreds of regular-sized seagulls and lots of cormorants, and you have to pay to get better access to the actual colony, so that was it for the albatross’. We did learn one interesting factoid - albatross mate for life, with the male flying one way around the globe and the female the other, and they meet up every couple years within 2 days of each other to mate. Wicked!

Cliff with bird colonies

The real gem of the Otago Peninsula - and what we were there to see - are the penguins. There are two types - the yellow eyed and the little blue penguin - that nest on the peninsula. Of course there are business that let you pay to see the colonies, and of course we weren’t about to do that. So, we made about a 30 minute trek through some sand dunes and along the beach to get the slight chance to see a penguin. We were immediately greeted by a large seal lazing about on the beach, along with about a dozen of his friends sprawled out on the nearby rocks. The Department of Conservation has a hide to view the penguins from (apparently they are scared off if they see people waiting for them on the beach), so we waited. They said you have the best chance to spot the penguins as they come into shore in the late afternoon after a day of hunting out at sea. We were a bit early, but lucked into one little yellow-eyed penguin who must have had a good day and came home early. He hopped up on the rocks, stood there for a while (apparently to build up his energy, as I would soon found out why), then started a mind-boggling trek up the side of this cliff to wherever his nest must be. It was truly amazing to watch this little guy hop up this steep slope probably 400 feet high. We have a good video of it, which we'll post soon.

Walk down to beach and penguin colony - at the far end of the beach you can see here

Not a great picture because we were far away, but I can confirm that is a penguin!

No other penguins showed up for a while, so we took off to go to another beach where we hoped to see the little blue penguins. Unfortunately these guys don’t come in until just after dusk, and we were starving and had no place to sleep, so we didn’t bother to wait around for them to show up. Too bad, because there can be as many as 50 or 60 of them show up in one night and walk right past you to their nests. Reason enough to go back I guess.

One thing Steph and I still struggle with is missing the food from back home. We have Subway and whatever recipes we decide to make, but that’s about it. So when we found out that Dunedin has a Pizza Hut, Steph ditched my promise to have a nice dinner and we ordered the biggest pizza they make and downed the entire thing as we sat in the car outside. It was great. We still didn’t have a place to stay, though, and didn’t feel like paying to camp or stay in a hostel. One of the more popular ways to tour New Zealand is to rent a campervan and “freedom camp” - park somewhere public for the night for free. This sounded right up our alley, but we could not for the life of us find a good spot, so we slept in the back of the car in a hotel parking lot. Not the most glamorous thing ever, but it was free and we both slept reasonably well. The next morning Steph hit her groove. Starbucks first, of course. Then some walking around town to take pics and see some of the sights (shops weren’t open yet). Next we had to go see the World's Steepest Street (residential, apparently) which I can attest was really, really steep. Barely made it up there in the car. Steph refused to ride back down with me and opted to walk.

It was still early, so we headed over to the “botanic garden” expecting to wonder around a bit before going back into town. Boy were we wrong. Who would have known little Dunedin with a population of about 120,000 would have such an incredible botanical gardens? It was HUGE, really well manicured, with loads of different exhibits and gardens, and a cool aviary. We spent a good two hours walking around and seeing the place until the memory card on the camera got full (Steph loves taking pictures of flowers).

big leaf!

You should have seen the look on Steph’s face when she realized that Dunedin has an actual indoor shopping mall. I’m pretty sure the hour or so she spent wandering around that mall was the highlight of her month. She was on such a high that I was even able to talk her into driving about half of the way back to Queenstown! Sweet. Hopefully if/when I keep making money on the river, we’ll be able to make more trips in the near future. Next on our radar - an overnight hike and a trip to the beaches near Invercargill on the very south tip of the South Island. See ya soon!

For more pics from this trip, click HERE.