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Published: December 23rd 2009
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So after relaxing in Queenstown for a few days, we headed over to Dunedin which was supposed to resemble Edinburgh, having had a heavy, early Scottish influence. On the bus over there our driver was telling us that there was a wildlife tour that we could do that was one of the best activities available on the South Island. So Tom begrudgingly agreed to do it with me even though we'd already spent all of our budget for NZ. So an hour later we were bundled into a van, given a pair of binoculars and off we went to see the only Albatross colony in the world that is built on the Mainland. The Albatrosses were definately interesting with a huge wingspan of 6ft, after having amusingly watched these huge birds being constantly chased and chastised to no avail by some comparably tiny seagulls, we set off to find some seals, sea lions and best of all penguins!! Unfortunately i don't think we picked the best day for wildlife watching as although their were plenty of Seals we had already seen these a couple of times before, there were no Sea Lions and very few Penguins - even the guides seemed
shocked. Although the penguins that we did see were the yellow eyed penguins - the rarest of all penguins; with less than 4000 of them in existence. We also saw a penguin in her nest with two baby chicks and were able to see how if a penguin does not have a mate they are forced to lie on their front in the grass rather than a nest or burrow, which was quite sweet/sad. After arriving back in Dunedin at 10pm, slightly disappointed in ourselves for spending all of our money, i realised that in typical Rachel (disgraceful at keeping anything) fashion i had left my camera in the pocket of my raincoat in the bus and we had to leave the next morning at 7.30am. Luckily the office of the company was still open and the man on the desk agreed to drop it round to me the next morning at 7am - which was extremely kind of him and illogically made me feel alot better about the money that we had spent.
Nice and early the next day with very little money left but one safe camera, we headed off across to Lake Tekapo, stopping en-route via
'the most photographed church in the world' and the Guiness World Records justified 'worlds steepest street' (makes you sick doesn't it, Theresa? we could have just tilted Wesley Slope!) so after walking up and down the steepest street (i would hate to live there) and re-enforcing the 'fact' by taking a photograph of the very picturesque church, we settled down for the evening in our hostel right on the edge of lovely turqouise Lake Tekapo. The next day we hiked up to the top of Mount John (a hill to some...but a mountain to Tom and i) to see the breathtaking views across Lake Tekapo, which is a milky turqouise colour due to the glacier water and mineral compounds. In the other direction you could see huge snow capped mountain ranges stretching right across the horizon. After messing around for ages trying to get the self timer to work on the camera and achieving some strange but not as indecent as they may look pictures, we headed back down to the hostel where we spent the evening with a few beers and being taught a very interesting drinking version of Uno by some Irish guys that we had met.
After another early start (and the last!) we stopped for breakfast at a tiny town in the middle of nowhere on the way to Christchurch. When we got back on the bus the driver found that the bus was no longer working. We were told that it would take half an hour to get it fixed up and we would be on our way again ... Four hours later after being regaled with tales of numerous breakdowns with this driver - the last solution being the mechanic advising the driver that it would help if he put petrol in - we set off again for Christchurch in a different bus with a more competent driver. When we arrived Magic compensated us with 2 free drinks and lots of Dominos Pizza. Two drinks turned into 10 and we found ourselves involved in a race around the city to meet objectives: Photos of ; someone kissing a police person, a picture in the front seat of a taxi, a picture of the stray offices and numerous other slightly less modest missions. We and the other three teams acheived the first couple easily but nobody seemed to know where the Stray offices were
except us as we had hunted round every bus company office in the city the first time around. We tried to lead everyone in the wrong direction, but became embroiled in a race with another team who followed us to the Stray Offices. Unfortunately Tom was beaten to the finish line by a guy off the other team and we missed out on the $600 Stray bus pass that we didn't need, but i did spend the rest of the night attempting to discuss the mysteries of life with a German man who spoke very little English and ended up with a German book about something with Johnny in the title which i vaguely remember swearing i would read. Meanwhile Tom went on to try and win a tattoo and did get a few more free drinks by coming second in the Rock/ Paper/ Scissors contest helped inpart by the unpredicatbility of intoxication. Oh good times...
After spending the next day recovering from the night before, we set off to catch our flight out of New Zealand over to Australia, which was sad and exciting all at once. We loved every minute of New Zealand and definately plan to
return at some point on the future.
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grandma @ granda
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dunedin adventure
hi to both i would imagine just seeing the the albatross in their own environment would be a sight to behold we cant imagine anything in the air as large as that ,thinking about you both a lot as christmas is drawing near have a wonderful christmas stay safe love granda @grandma xxx