Dunedin

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Dunedin today ! Although we moored in Port Chalmers a busy container port about 15 km from Dunedin proper and it's super busy today not only did the Volendam pull in with 1400 on board but we beat the Diamond  Princess in by about 30min and they add another 2500 people to the population, adding  lots of tourist dollars to the local economy especially at the Cadbury chocolate factory, apparently you had to queue up for about 1/2 an hour to get tickets then still wait the same time for your turn on the tour or so several people told us at dinner. For the first time the phones actually picked up a local signal it's been incredibly quite so far. After lots of hunting we found the 2degrees SIMM card and now have a working NZ phone. We took an hour  long double decker bus tour around Dunedin thank goodness we didn't try walking everything seems to be uphill especially the steepest street in the world according to the guineas world records it has a 1 in 2.86 gradient. At first the town seemed to be smallish until you found all the valleys and hillside buildings, Otago University alone apparently has 25,000 students and 5000 staff. The student accommodation is really quaint. 
The local octagon market had some lovely things I'm sure it was still at tourist prices but it was still more realistic than what we had seen elsewhere.
On returning to the ship at 5 we discovered that the weather had arrived from down south and they had decided to delay sailing till 8 but we weren't allowed to spend anymore time on shore so we ended up sitting at dinner overlooking the container port watching the cranes play Lego blocks with the big containers sometimes 8 high. Amazing!!!!!!
Off to Christchurch tomorrow.          

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