Dunedin

I think valentines was more fun the first time Lindsay woke me up. Valentines at 5:00 in the morning is a bit more harsh, but thanks to Lindsay, it looks like she caught us up to date- almost. Let me tell you about dunedin!

Our first 2 nights were spent in ramsay's lodge - a really nice hostel, but a really bad location. However, that didn't stop us from getting up and walking around the city to check out the attractions (and summer sales).

Oh man, the janitor is mopping us up in a trap of surrounding wet floor. This new janitor really is something else.

Back to Dunedin though, the place is full of nice buildings, historic churches, colleges, hotels, everything! One of our favorite activities was climbing the steepest residential road in the world! Baldwin street. not something you get to do everyday! Unless Ofcourse you were one of the unfortunate house owners on the top that had to honk at all the tourists to move out of the way before driving through. We also enjoyed the museum, botanic gardens and flower market during our stay.

The night life was quite fun in Dunedin as well- one night we met Jacob Black (New Moon) and Justin Bieber look-alikes. We also met a couple Maori boys (Jacob black was one Aka Shane) who serenaded us with their traditional Hakka dance. Its lots of fun travelling when the cities are a bit smaller (I think population was about 130000) because by our last few days it wasn't uncommon that we regularly bumped into a friend we had made somewhere around town.

This morning we headed out and hitched a couple rides getting us to... The middle of no where. We had good company though, a park ranger drove us an extra 45 minutes out of his way to get us to the location we needed to be to get on the right highway. He also gave us some contacts of his for when we head to Australia. After about a hopeless 20 minute wait on the side of the highway, some guys we had been hanging out with the previous night pulled up. It was such a relief! Joe and Vince (californians) were headed -more or less- in the same direction as us- through the catlins.
We crammed in the back of their two door car, bags on lap, and headed out for a day of roadtripping!
Our first stop was to some waterfalls through a rainforest. Next, we hit up a beach to see if the waves were any good for joe's surfing. The waves were great- but not ao much for surfing, we headed to a petrified forest next. Nothing quite as thrilling as a 170 million year old tree!
Our last stop before invercargill was at the southern most tip of the south island. We may have even seen Antarctica (I wish, couldn't even see Stuart island) however, we figured this isthe farthest south we'll likely ever get. In invercargill we drove around the city, checking out the park and downtown area before heading to the side of the highway to eat our dinner with some fellow hitchhikers we had seen earlier.
Joe and Vince then abandoned us at the mcdonalds before heading back north to Dunedin. Which brings us to this fateful night of hourly sleep shifts in the chain mcdonalds! Mm I think it's time for an ice cream cone!
-LA