South Island, NZ

Thursday, January 7. Today was a driving day – destination Dunedin. Dunedin is a large city (I think it's the second largest city on the South Island after Christchurch) and supposed to be a beautiful historic spot. In addition, it's next to (or part of) the Otago Peninsula, supposedly the most accessible wildlife area on the South Island. We headed out of Invercargill with the weather looking decent, continuing our journey on the Southern Scenic Route. The first stop was Porpoise Bay, a spot where Hector dolphins are supposed to be regular visitors. We didn't see any dolphins, but we did see sweeping views of the coast and one large fur seal, just lounging about in the parking lot. He did not appear to be scared of people at all and it was quite amusing watching him lumber about. Next stop was Curio Bay where an area of petrified forest, 180 million years old, can be seen at low tide. It wasn't quite low tide when we got there, but we were able to seen stumps and whole fallen trees among the rocks. We continued on our journey until we hit McLean Falls, where were took a 40 minute hike into see a beautiful waterfall. Next was Cathedral Caves. The Cathedral Caves are only accessible within two hours of either side of low tide. We took a 20 minute walk through a thick forest and then a 10 minute walk along the beach. We finally arrived at the caves – two 30 meter high caves carved into the coast. Though it had been raining on and off, the rain had stopped. We got there about an hour or so before low tide so the first cave was still about knee high filled with water. The second cave only had a little water and were were able to walk to the back of the second cave and access the first cave. The caves were quite impressive. We continued on our journey. Next stop was Purakaunui Falls, apparently the most photographed waterfalls in NZ. Our last stop on our journey before reaching Dunedin was Nugget Point. A storm had set in as we drove out to Nugget Point complete with wind, rain and hail (as an aside, the thunder in NZ sounds very different than the thunder in the U.S.). Fortunately by the time we reached Nugget Point the rain had almost completely stopped. We hiked out to the lighthouse where there were spectacular views of the coastline and seals lining the beaches and rocks. We continued on and finally reached Dunedin in the rain around 6:30 pm. We checked into our motel, grabbed a pizza for dinner and called it a night.

Friday, January 8. Today was a busy day. After breakfast and checking out the weather forecast we headed to the Dunedin train station – a beautiful historic building in downtown Dunedin and the second most photographed building in the southern hemisphere (with the Sydney Opera House being the first). Asides from checking out the building, we were there to look into taking a ride on the Taieri Gorge Railway. It was a cold day with rain on and off and it looked like a good day to spend on a train. We booked a 2:30 pm train ride. We had a few hours to kill, so we decided to check out Baldwin Street – the steepest residential street in the world (according to the Guinness Book of World Records). We weren't able to drive up the road, but we were able to walk up it (and fortunately the rain had stopped). It wasn't a long road, but boy oh boy was it steep, with a gradient of 1 in 1.266. Keith and I huffed and puffed our way to the top and baby-stepped our way back down. Next we decided to check out the Octagon – the center of the city. On the way there, we passed a small sign which said Mount Cargill Lookout. Keith and I weren't ones to pass up any lookout, so off we went. It was a bit of drive with much of the road unpaved, but after 10-15 minutes of driving, we arrived at the top of a large hill/mountain with spectacular views of all of Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula. The color of water was incredible again the green hills. It was one of the best lookouts we've visited during all of our travels. Next up we headed to the Octagon where there were several beautiful historic buildings. After driving around the city for a bit, we headed to the Cadbury World – the Cadbury chocolate factory that, according to my Lonely Planet, handles 85% of NZ's chocolate production. Unfortunately the factory was closed until the end of January, so we weren't able to take the full tour. We were able to take an abridged tour which included seeing one ton of liquid chocolate dropped 30 meters and many free samples of chocolate. By then it was time to head over to the train station to catch our train. We were taking a four hour round trip ride from Dunedin to Pukerangi through the Taieri Gorge. It's supposed to be one of the greatest train journeys in the world. The train ride took up through the rocky gorge crossing dozens of viaducts and going through numerous tunnels. It was a great ride and the gorge was impressive. While it did rain at times, the weather in generally held off for us. We arrived back in Dunedin around 6:30 pm, hit the market to pick up a few provisions, made some tacos for dinner, had a soak in our spa tub, ate some of Cadbury chocolate for dessert and called it a night.