Driving to Dunedin

The next leg of our trip has us going from Omarama to Dunedin, which in Gaelic means Edinburg 

We had a stop for tea in the town of Oamaru

They had this very cool steampunk display

And museum 

Here is the place we grabbed a cup of hot chocolate and a boysenberry custard donuts. Yes it was as good and as messy as it sounds. It was like a two cinnamon and sugar donut sandwich with boysenberries and custard as the center.

This is the oldest part of town. They had huge warehouses that now hold carving studios. They carve the soft stone around the town and then harden it outside. Not sure exactly the process, but the sculptures were pretty cool

They also produce a great deal of wool on the farms surrounding the town

This is another of the small Victorian cafes 

This information sign was curious 

 I was surprised about the penguins. But I found a club that was called the Penguins, so maybe that was what it meant

This was just a really cool building but the bay

We had lunch at this site in a cafe at the top of the beach

There are these interesting rocks that almost look like geodes or eggs

Some are even buried into the sand of the beach. The legend says a giant chicken laid these in the ancient times and they fossilized. Don’t know how they got there, but very strange looking on the sand beach

When we got into Dunedin, we had an wildlife excursion to see the nesting grounds of the giant albatrosses 

We saw a black winged seagull’s hangout

The breeding area of a small sizes seal

Here is one of the babies 

And another one climbing the cliff

The light house is on the top of this area, but general public is not allowed as it is the endangered giant albatross and seal breeding areas

This is one of the albatrosses in flight. Their wingspan is around 10 feet 

Those white dots are all juvenile albatrosses about to start flying. Once they leave this nesting place, they will not return to land for five years. There were 14 chicks this year and the females only lay eggs every other year. Each female only lays one egg. It takes ten weeks to hatch and the parents have to feed the chick for eight month’s before it is ready to fly. Parent take turns sitting on the egg and then feeding the chick. When the juvenile are ready to take off, they are four feet tall. The birds only come back to land to breed. They come back to breed at the same place they were born. These albatrosses rest on the water, only coming to land to mate, lay eggs, and raise a chick.

This is a Māori temple

This is the entrance gate to a Māori center

The small community we drove through at the end of our cruise as they were taking us back to our hotel

The bay that Dunedin sits on

Another shoot of the ride as we headed back around the bay to Dunedin 

It was about a 40 minute drive back to our hotel as they took us out from Dunedin and dropped us off at a dock on the other end of this large bay

The area around the bay is full of field like this one with sheep in it

And this one

From our hotel we got a great view of some of the main downtown area of Dunedin 

Most of the cities big and small we have seen so far, have a lot of green space

The older site is just up the block from the current site

The bank of New Zealand, an original build from the 1850s around when the main town was built

By the modern is often a monument to the past

They also had a number of building murals 

From the center of the octagon (city center) there is a church and the government building with a statue of Robert Burns

There are delightful old churches dotting the town scape 

The city center area is mainly these wonderful stone buildings from early in the town’s formation 

After our walking around and dinner earlier, we returned to the room for a little dessert and tea. Then to bed as the next day would be early and busy.