Blogs from Dunedin, Otago, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 6

After leaving Invercargill we headed back northeast towards Dunedin. Once we got to the east coast we headed back south a little to make a side trip to Nugget Point in the Catlins. This was just a point that had rocks jutting up out of the water like gold nuggets. Very cool looking place. It was also a location to see penguins but we would have needed to wait tell late afternoon/evening which was a good 6-7 hours away. So we headed back north to Dunedin. In Dunedin we started of with a tour of the Cadbury World. It's an international chocolate company. It was cool in the fact that we got lots of chocolate and that it smelled really cool but it sucked because none of the machines were running. All we saw was a ... read more

My apologies for an extremly prolonged blog update. Life in New Zealand these last two months, has been jam-packed with working/volunteering on "organic farms" (in exchange for food and accomodations), hiking and hitchhiking all around this beautiful, sheep-filled country. The WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) experience was not exactly what I had expected. However, I appreciated the opportunity to work at jobs that I had never done before, such as painting a house, picking rotten tomatoes, cutting honeycomb and filling jars of honey, selling fruits and veggies at the local farmers market, and living in a cabin in the middle of the NZ bush (complete with spiderwebs, every type of spider in NZ, cockroaches, an orchestra of cicadas, and the ever so pleasant smelling, self-composting/drop toilet). I have much more respect for farmers, migrant laborers, ... read more

Greetings friends and all! This isn’t an easy blog to write, as to be honest we haven’t really done that much for the last week and a half. We were just saying today how it’s probably for the best that we’ve now left the South Island and made our way north, as we’ve been getting a teensy bit bored. Some might wonder how we could be feeling listless in this stunning country filled with beautiful and charming scenery, amazing perfumed aromas of the wild flowers and abundant pine forests so prevalent down this way, and the warmth & friendliness of the NZ people. The answer is a simple one. The South Island is so completely similar to Scotland, our home, that we had begun to wonder whether we are still using our precious time away from ... read more

My First Holi at Dunedin BHARI PICHKARI BHEEGI TORI CHUNARI RE DUNEDIN MEIN KHELNE HOLI, AAYE DILWALON KI YE TOLI RE On April 9. 2006 we celebrated HOLI in Dunedin. However it was a bit late (orignal date was I think march 15, 2006) but better late than never. Ab yahan par gulal to milta nahin hai so we had to manage with water colours. The one being used to paint faces during the rugby game here. The plus point of these colours is that they are washable so come off immediately without any effort. So no coloured hands and faces after holi. Kya hai sara mazza hi chala gaya. We were also visited by a Kiwi family who enjoyed it a lot. You can recognize then easily in the pictures. We had some good music ... read more

Travelling in New Zealand for me has been like riding an unpredictable rollercoaster, smooth and running sometimes yet rickety and stuck at other times. Here in NZ I tried balancing fun and work but in the wrong way, I was looking for the ideal work situation and struck out. Starting out I had built up my expectations to come WWOOF (work in exchange for room and board) at a creative retreat center for a month. After things at this so called "retreat center" didn't work out, I was in search of a better stable situation. First I worked on an organic farm in the North Island for a week picking rotten tomatoes, filling honey jars and getting attacked by mosquitos on the outdoor drop toilet. I next attempted to help a Danish woman reconstruct her ... read more