Dunedin...round 2

After New Year’s Jonathan still had a few days off so we took off to Dunedin again (a city 3-4 hours south).   This charming city looks like San Fran but with a European twist.  We drove along the coast and watched a cruise ship roll in, a fire on a pier, and took a peek at the most photographed building in NZ, the train station (which is constructed of alternating local volcanic rock and limestone).  We also visited the Otago Museum (cool), the Cadbury Factory (side note: Roald Dahl worked there in a Cadbury factory when he was 14 – I could totally see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory all over this place – they workers even wore purple overalls and had a chocolate fountain), and visited the world’s steepest street (side note: we drove up it but didn’t quite make it in our little Subaru Impresa with a tiny engine…with sweaty palms Jonathan quickly turned onto a drive way and exhaled – hilarious – and they also let millions of candy-coated chocolate balls down the street on a certain day of the year and have the annual Gutbuster where you race up and down – fun).  That evening we took a jaunt down to Tunnel Beach at low tide (tide charts are our best friends these days-we were still bummed we missed the blowhole at Punakaiki).  This beach is paradise!  A prominent politician in the late 1800’s carved a tunnel through the cliffs to reach this beautiful beach for his family, daughter specifically.  There is little wonder why when you make the effort to get down there, and the bigger effort to get back up (20 min down and 45 min up because it’s steep).  When you approach the tunnel it looks quite like the photos and paintings of the Garden Tomb, except for it’s much like Narnia’s wardrobe because it leads you to a magical place…heaven on a beach.  A-mazing, once again! 

Dunedin Train Station - alternating volcanic rock and limestone



Baldwin St. (world's steepest) and Cadbury Factory



The next day we headed back up the coast to take a peek at some natural spherical boulders (this time at Shag Point) and then pick up our van that had been in the shop for over a month.  Our expectations were fairly low regarding the Katiki Boulders, especially since the was not very well marked nor present in good ol’ Lonely Planet, in fact we had semi-forge our own trail down the cliff to the beach.  Once on the beach it was like manna from heaven for us.  The boulders were photographable we wanted to keep exploring forever, since the further you walked the better they seemed to get, but we did have kids and a schedule to adhere to so we reluctantly left after a while.  These boulders are different than the Moeraki Boulders in that most of them have had or do currently have dinosaur fossils within them (well, cavities of the bones they can make casts of).  In the Otago Museum in Dunedin we saw the Plesiosaur that was found on that very beach (15 meters long I think).  These boulders grew around these dinosaurs over millions of years in a perfect sphere.  Wow!  What an incredible natural wonder!

Well the curse of the Black Pearl continues! Upon picking up our van from the mechanic we were a little reluctant to trust it 100% so I drove behind to make sure everything was okay. 10-15 minutes up the road I saw sparks and chunks of fire dropping from the bottom of the van and then rolling off into the dry brush. I honked and flashed my lights in efforts to stop Jonathan from starting a fire, but as he slowed down another chunk of burning something fell again and this time actually STARTED A BRUSH FIRE!! I quickly jumped out of the car I was in and stomped it out. Jonathan was oblivious to all of this and thought I was joking when I told him. Needless to say we called the mechanic right away and he towed it back to his shop. We left, once again, van-less but luckily this time we had another car for back-up. Sigh. Shake of the head. Sigh.

We made it home safe and sound with no reports on the news of any crazy freak brush fires by the highway.  Phew!