Blogs from Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 44

After Rotarua, Stevie & I flew to Dunedin - the wannabe Edinburgh. (Dunedin's great and all the streets are named after Edinburgh - but it doesn't compare to the real thing.) We've had a great couple of days here including visiting the excellent Otago museum which had an Antarctic display which is giving me ideas for the next trip. We had a look round the grounds of the very pretty Lanarch castle (NZ's only castle). We also went on an off-road tour on the Otago peninsular and saw fur seals close up in a natural breeding site as well viewing the very rare yellow-eyed penguins from a hide above a totally protected beach where they breed. Today we went to the botanic gardens which has an excellent aviary, up Baldwin street - the world's steepest street ... read more

As I left Queenstown heading for Dunedin I came across this London red bus in front of me. I later discovered it was heading for what I would describe as one adventure I was not likely to go for, the Kawaru Bungy Centre. This was the original site that A.J.Hacker started this mad sport I 'had to investigate ,see if I had the nerve with out having to resort to brown trousers .well I watched the chap go for it ,you are at 43metres above the river and it’s over in 2 seconds ,well I was tempted but then it cost $150 .I didn’t have the very fat wallet for 2 seconds and as another disincentive was the 300 steps climb to get back to the top .sometimes I think yes you should have gone ... read more

Well, I (H) wanted a quick stop in Dunedin to do a wildlife tour as there are loads of seals, sea lions, penguins etc etc on this part of the coast. I have to say I wish I hadn't bothered!! The wildlife was definaetly there but the tour was no where near as good as I had hoped spending about 30 minutes checking out the wildlife and 3 hours sailing into the harbour - and to top it off it was freezing!!! I did get to see the fur seal pups though and they were very cute. Before catching the bus to Christchurch we had just enough time for a quick tour of the Cadbury's factory (there's always enough time for chocolate!!). The tour was actually pretty interesting having never made it to Birmingahm - sad ... read more

After searching the Lonely Planet, we decided to stop in at a little place called Curio Bay in the Catlins on the south coast. This turned out to be a seriously lucky find as we had a lovely little camp site and we sharing the bay with a permenant family of 20 hector dolphins. At sunset many of the dolphins started messing around in the surf making for a great show! We also got to see some very rare yellow eyed penguins coming in for the night. The next day we followed on the penguin theme by heading up to Dunedin, famous for both blue penguins and yellow-eyed. We stopped in at the Niagara Falls Cafe in Niagara Falls - not as amazing as the Canadian ones but thankfully a whole lot less touristy. This was ... read more

One of the cool things about New Zealand's South Island is the abundance of unusual wildlife that is available to anyone to go and see. Our campsite for the night was not far from a place called Shag Point which we drove to first thing to have a spot of breafast before wandering over to the cliffs and finding a handful of seals basking on the rocks below. A few minutes' drive away was a viewing area for yellow eyed penguins but we were there way too early and the penguins had all gone swimming for the day (well, the weather was nice so who can blame them?). The penguins don't come ashore again until early evening, so we cursed our rotten luck to have come at the wrong time of day. Rather than wait around ... read more