Well Dunedin (Mar. 31 – Apr. 2)

From Akaroa we drove southward to Dunedin, stopping for a night at a campground near Oamaru. The campground was nothing special, but we were excited to see that it had a hot tub. Excited, that is, until we saw that they were charging $5 to hop in for a half hour! Properly offended, we declined, as it felt like a serious breach of our backpacking principles. As Becky can’t resist warm water, one could consider it quite a principled stand on her part. Not exactly a Gandhi or MLK-level stand on our part, but we felt good about it.

The moeraki boulders are surprisingly spherical!

Between Oamaru and Dunedin lies Moeraki Boulders, a group of round boulders on the beach that are, as the postcard puts it, “surprisingly spherical.” We have to say that they were pretty cool, though since you can’t see the bottom halves, half of them seems to be wasted. Also, there didn’t appear to be around 50 boulders as the guidebooks indicated. We wonder if perhaps people have trucked off the smaller ones, as at least one driveway in the area featured some surprisingly spherical decorations.

Becky stretches out on a boulder

In Dunedin, we Couchsurfed for the weekend with a woman named Anne, who lived just outside the city with her son, Andy. Anne is a lovely woman and was so hospitable and gracious to us during our stay, cooking dinner for us both nights we stayed there. Andy was also great, sharing music with us from his vast collection. Thanks to both of them for being so generous! Anne also treated Becky to a small gift for her birthday – the only present she unwrapped this year! – which was a much appreciated gesture.

Anne and Becky - another great couchsurfing host!

While at Anne’s, I was able to catch a bunch more rugby, and figure out the differences between Rugby Union, League, and Sevens. They’re all quite different versions of the same game, and Sevens in particular is a blast. Sevens games are very short (only 14 minutes), so they’re necessarily fast-paced and action-filled affairs featuring end-to-end runs. Sevens tournaments also look like a great party, with stadiums packed with revelers from many countries dressed in ridiculous costumes, boozily swaying, singing, and occasionally watching some rugby action.

The weather in Dunedin wasn’t quite brilliant while we were there, but we did make it out to the Otago Peninsula to try to see some wildlife. We didn’t see any of the advertised penguins or albatrosses, but the drive out there is quite scenic, winding along the harbor to Taiaroa Head. We also went to Baldwin Street in Dunedin, billed as the world’s steepest street. To be honest, it was a bit of a letdown since the street didn’t seem any steeper than half the streets in San Francisco, in my opinion. We learned later that we really should’ve had a box of Jaffas (a round candy-covered chocolate popular in NZ) to roll down the street. We’ll have to remember that if we’re ever back in town.

The steepest street in the world - Baldwin Street in Dunedin

Given that the weather was a bit dodgy, on one of the days we went to see Black Sheep, a NZ film about sheep that turn bloodthirsty as a result of genetic engineering gone wrong. As we haven’t been to a movie in months and we were having crappy weather in a big city, it seemed like the right time to take in a movie, especially since it was a NZ flick. Between the sheep and the fears of GE food, we’d say the film manages to hit two pretty big NZ touchstones right off the bat.

More views of Baldwin Street

Black Sheep is basically a lesser, NZ-centric version of Shaun of the Dead, in the horror-comedy genre, so gory-but-funny scenes and bad jokes abound. And it almost certainly sets the record for most scenes of a sheep leaping from offscreen and disemboweling someone. Overall, we enjoyed Black Sheep, and would recommend it as a good popcorn flick, especially if you’re a Kiwiphile at all. After seeing the killer sheep in the film, though, it did make us do a double-take as we were driving through the countryside the next day.

The view of the lighthouse from Otago Peninsula

We found Dunedin to be a nice, relatively quiet little city in southern NZ. Due to the big university here, Otago, it’s a student-dominated town, but that isn’t bad as there are heaps of cafes in town, especially around the center square, the Octagon. As a city square it’s certainly unique, but as a traffic pattern it seems a bit silly. When you drive on the street around the square you’re just constantly making 45 degree turns.

There are also a few breweries in Dunedin, and you can bet that we stopped by, but we didn’t see anything too interesting going on there. We figured we could skip the Speight’s brewery tour as it was $17 a head! You’d better get a lot of samples at the end for that kind of coin. We’re constantly shocked by the prices they charge here for brewery tours, especially when it’s a beer as uninteresting as Speight’s. Apologies to any Southern Men reading who that may have offended, but people count on this blog for the cold, hard truth. Next, we’re off to wwoof at a backpackers even further south in the Catlins region. It promises penguins and surfing lessons, wish us luck!

On the road to Otago Peninsula