Dunedin with Marie (~ Jan 1st 2017)

After Warrington I hitched a hike with some young german guys back to Dunedin. I checked into the hostel where I'd meet Marie (I met her a few weeks back in Wellington). We stayed in contact and so I stayed in Dunedin for New Years, because Queenstown would have been too expensive.

We first headed into town to see some things and decided to walk to the steepest road in the world (I mentioned before). When we finally arrived I realised how different it looked by foot. We climbeed up. And up. And up.
When we arrived we made some fotos, cause it actually is really steep! Wow!

What a climb up! Wow...

I'm standing straight, this is probably the steepest part of the road

The "view" down

The next day was going to be new years eve, so we did some shopping for a big asian peanut curry and prepared. The day over it rained, so we tried doing indoor activities. Like a visiting the cadbury factory again (though we only went into the store) and then did a tour through the Speights Brewery. It was fun, the guide was old and had TONS of anecdotes to share and he appeared to have met every important person in the world (premier ministers, chancelors and kings of any country). And the way he talked you could think he was living since forever... "Oh you're from Germany? Merkel was heree a few months back! Interesting person, though her politics aren't that popular at the moment, right?" ... "Denmark? The royal family visited here a few years ago" ... "The big world fair in 1925/26 was amazing and put Dunedin on the map! Wonderful thing"
The beer tasting was a little short, because the next tour walked in... But of course drinking beer is always nice ;-)

Now we had our "fancy" dinner with new years gin! We then headed out with some others from the hostel to the "ocatagon", the centre of Dunedin to see the fireworks and celebrate. Wooooo! Happy new year! :D

The next day we had made a date with a dutch couple to do a wildlife tour. We were picked up from our hostel and got to know our guide, well not really, he didn't introduce himself, so found out what his name was.
BUT we found out, that he runs the tours for sereval years and has a small museum in his house. He is building his house for some years now and is hoping to be able to sublet it to some backpackers at one point. He used many parts from different places and sites in Dunedin, like doors from an old cinema, chairs from a theatre and stairs from a other old house (or something like that).
Then he showed us around in his home, it was quite nice, then we came into the "Museum". There were many "statues" standing around, built by him! All in different costumes, with different weapons and so on. He collected them all around the world, from different travels, bought them from different stores and so on. It was impressive. Mostly they were just busts, some actually had arms and an upper body. Other than that he had many other "artifacts" lying around in his home in shelfs and glass vitrines (?).
He actually had about 2 rooms full of these manikins. He told us about all of them, where they are from, which culture they represent etc.
After this small detour we headed out to the Otago Peninsula.

View from our guides house over the Dunedin beach!

The wildlife tour started! The guide told us about the different animals we would hopefully see: seals, sea lions, albatrosses and penguins. Maybe some others on the way. Our first destination was the albatross place at the very point of the peninsula.
On the way we stopped a few times to take some pictures of trees kneeling to the wind, sheep staring at weird humans and just the beautiful coastline and view over the landscape.

Calm down Marie!

View from a higher point on the Otago peninsula and of course sheep

This sheep was just staring at us making pictures of the landscape

Close to the Albatross centre was a small beach where seals were hanging around, it was now closed off and only a walkway lead down to the beach. In the evening it gets closed by the albatross centre, who then sells tickets, so people pay to see penguins, who supposedly come there in the evening. Incredible. Everything was about making money for them, they let people walk up to the albatross nests or resting grounds, but only for about 20 minutes, so if no albatross was flying in during that time, you basically wasted your money. And a sitting albatross just isn't as spectacular as a flying one.

Because the seals were quite far away I used the binoculours to "zoom in" :D

Worked quite well I'd say ;-)

Our guy of course knew all the tricks and walked with us towards the edge of the cliffs where a walkway was built. He's hoping this will stay free for everyone to use and not be charged as well, but you never know...
Anyway we waited there and he told us the best position to wait at and how the albatrosses would fly in. And they did! In all we saw 5 of these huge birds flying past us, some "snuck" up on us, others were visible for a longer period (flying in from the ocean). He had some binoculars with him, so we could scout ahead. And he would be on th elookout aswell and yell when we should get our cameras ready! I hope the pictures are good, it's hard to get flying birds on camera...

This is where the Albatross' will most probably fly up using the winds breaking on the cliffs, so they can just glide on it

And surely: Albatross flying by!

Albatross incoming!!

After these successful moments we went back to the car and the next stop was the penguin place. It was a beach, that was apparently a breeding and living spot for the yellow eyed penguin, which is one of the rarest penguins in the world, and at the same time pretty big!
He said he'd wait in the car, because he's old and his hip hurts when walking too much and told us where to be on the lookout. So we headed down to the beach. Before we seperated he looked with his good binoculars and actually spotted a penguin! He said, if anything, we can probably still see that one standing there.

We started climbing down the dunes and onto the beach. There were only a few other people walking around and a few sea lions lying on the ground. The dutch couple didn't see one of them and walked past it by only a couple meters, luckily it was asleep, so nothing happened, but they were suprised, that they did not see it lying on the ground! We took some fotos of them, being so close to these sleeping animals and went further to the end of the beach. We got closer to the penguin our guide had spotted and now we all were able to see it. We went in closer and then.... WHAT?!
No....
How could this be?!

It's a fake penguin?!?!?!

Someone apparently put up a wooden or cardboard penguin for some reason. And we fell for it... as did our guide. Wow... That was sad... The wind was hurling sand around and we were happy to be able to head up a small dune, where the wind wasn't able to throw sand into our faces.

Beneath the grassy rock, you should be able to make out a small penguinish figure (foto made though binoculors)

These sea lions were just relaxing on the beach and some people walked past them not noticing

Sea Lion selfie

Am I not fabulous?

View over the beach from all the way up

There we sat. We talked and waited to see some real penguins. At one point there weren't any humans on the beach any more, so we hoped the penguins might show up now, but they didn't. We were quiet for a while (wondering if they might have good ears and not come when people talked?) but that didn't help.
The weather got worse and we were wondering if we should keep waiting or not. I said we should, because the penguins probably come out of the water, when the sun has set and not earlier (I had been waiting for Penguins in Warrington after all). But at that point people started walking to our end of the beach again, some waited down at the water, between sea lions. I was wondering if the sealions might scare the penguins away or if it was the humans waiting at the water. But the weather got even worse and the wind stronger. It started drizzling a little bit and so we decided to head back to the car and not wait untill the sun sets completely. We didn't see and penguins that day, but many more people were on the way to the beach, so maybe we were there too early. We didn't bother going back with the approaching storm. Out guide was devestated, that it was a fake penguin and apologized many times to us and was also sad, that we didn't see any real penguins. 

He drove us back to Dunedin and dropped us back at the hostel.

The dutch couple left the next day, Marie and I planned to visit a place called Tunnel Beach. We got there with a bus and a 20 minute walk. We arrived there shortly before lunch time. There was a small food truck at the entrance of the walkway (again it was mostly gated and only a walkway lead down to the rocks and beach.

A glitch in the matrix? Nope, just me taking a panorama foto

2nd attempt on taking a panorama, this time over 360°! With 2 Maries :D

First we walked across the cliffs and took in the view and the landscape. Again very nice, it reminded me of the great ocean road with all it's stone pillars, cliffs and "bridges". Very nice, we took some fotos, many other people were also hanging around there and walking about.

Look at the square rock that broke out of the cliff!

View from the cliff down on tunnel beach

Next we headed down a small tunnel which was artificially made with steps to get down to the beach. Because it was really small it basically was a one-way street and you'd have to wait till you could finally cross. The beach itself wasn't much of a beach to go swimming. And interestingly the water just kept on crawling towards the cliffs. This was suprising for many people. They sometimes watched the water slowly creep towards them wondering when it'd stop and had to jump onto rocks in the last second because the water didn't stop as they expected! But those waves weren't that often.

View from tunnel beach up the cliff

This reminded me of the great ocean road witht the apostels, london bridge and so on

Cthulu's offspring? Nope, just a certain type of fast-growing Algae on the rocks which sometimes just break off and gets washed up on the shore

We spent some time there, looking at the people running from approaching water to not get their feet and shoes wet and climbing around the rocks ourselves. THen we started walking home and got a bus back again. That was our last evening together in Dunedin. Marie was leaving for Fiji in a few days and I left to meet Sönke, because Ronja was on a hike for a few days we could use the car together.

I wonder if the Village People did their shopping here?