Dunedin

It took 4 hours or so on the bus to get to Dunedin and then I decided it was a walkable distance from the bus station to the hostel – big mistake. It was bloody miles away and my bags were REALLY heavy and the hostel was at the top of a bloody great hill. Made it there in the end though. The hostel was a cool place, it was called Hogwartz and was an old Bishops house or something, nice and big and cosy and it had rooms called Gringotz and Dobby’s place – fun for any harry potter geeks such as myself.

I arrived in Dunedin in the middle of the annual Cadbury festival which lasted a week. Unfortunately I missed the great Jaffa rolling contest, which I would have like to go and see… There are chocolates over here called Jaffas… similar to chocolate oranges I think, Ive never tried one. Anyway, 25000 of these chocolate jaffas get rolled down the steepest road in Dunedin and the one that gets to the bottom wins. I did get a chance to do the Peninsular Day though. Basically a load of activities on the Otago peninsular were being offered for $10 each. I went with an American girl from the hostel and we went to Larnach Castle – the only castle in New Zealand. Most of the people that go to this peninsular day are locals I think, and had their own transport, so me and the other girl got our own personal coach driver for the afternoon!

Larnach castle was a nice old building. Pretty small but the woodwork inside was really decorative and nice. Shame it was a really cloudy day and we couldn’t see much of the peninsular, but it was still a fun trip. After Larnach Castle we went to see some yellow eyed penguins. We were up on a hill looking down on them waddling up the beach which was nice. And we could see some fishing out to sea which was cool, they were jumping out of the water, similar to how dolphins do. The lady from the yellow eyed penguin trust who took us said she’d never seen them behaving like that before so that was interesting to see.

I also went to Cadbury world while I was in Dunedin. I felt I was duty bound to compare it to the proper one back in Brum. It was ok, it was just a factory tour really, but we got lots of chocolate!

I was supposed to be settling in Dunedin for the winter, but I just wasn’t really feeling the place, so I had decided I’d go back up to Wellington after a week to go and stay with my friend Katy from Uni who is also out in New Zealand on a working holiday visa. So the next day I got on a bus from Dunedin at 7.45am and got up to Picton at 9.15pm (I stayed in the same hostel I did on my way down and was releaved to find there was still some free chocolate pudding and ice cream to eat!) It was a long day of travelling! The next day I got on the ferry back to wellington. The weather was quite rough and the crossing lasts 3 hours. I was feeling a bit queasy by the time I got to Wellington! Plus knackered as I had very inconsiderate people in my hostel room in Picton that night.