“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” -Sir Edmund Hillary, First Man to Summit Everest (and a New Zealander)

While research tells me that Edmund Hillary was born and raised in Auckland, I would bet he trained to summit Everest by walking the streets of Dunedin.  The hills here are killers, and Hogwartz is on a steep one for sure.  By the time I leave this city, I’m going to be in amazing shape.

View of Speights brewery at the bottom of the steps

            In fact, Dunedin has (literally) the world’s steepest hill on Baldwin Street.  And what do the kiwis do with this hill I ask you?  Why race giant candy down it to raise $50,000 for charity of course!  The Jaffa Race happens once a year and you can buy a ticket for $1.  The number on your ticket is then taped onto a marble-sized Jaffa candy (kind of like a round M&M or giant Sixlet).  25,000 of these babies are released at the top of the hill and the first 5 down win the grand prizes: $1000 grocery and/or gas gift certificates.  Now I imagined the candies rambling peacefully down the hill while children squeeled with delight.  However it was quite different. It began with a rumble and the next thing I knew there were Jaffas going freakin’ everywhere.  The race lasted only 30 seconds but by the time they had passed my hair was blown straight back and there was a trail of fire left on the street.  Awesome.

Side view of Baldwin Street

They have the best view in the house.

This will give you and idea of how steep the street is.

The filmographer

It was not, in fact, the winning ticket.

Here they come!  Click this picture to enlarge and check out the people shielding their faces.

...and there they go!

Fallen Jaffa candies.  Yes, kids were eating these.

I wish I had jaffa candy sweeper on my resume!

                On the way home, we took a detour through the city’s botanic gardens.  Even though it’s winter, they were still beautiful.  They also had a large collection of birds (in cages; boo, but still beautiful).  However, our favorite ones were in the wild.  They’re called kereru and look just like pigeons only they weigh about 50 lbs and when they hop from branch to branch the tree looks like it’s in pain.

Golden pheasant

Azaleas

The beloved kereru

                    Our last stop was to The Otago Museum.  We only spent about an hour or so there, but I really dug it and want to go back when I have more time.  They had a lot of natural history exhibits, 2 great photography exhibits, and a whole section about human history that included an 1877 cast made of a Japanese bound foot… ewww.

These things still swim in Australasian waters... creepy.

A child jumping on Brad.

Sir Edmund Hillary's mug when he was on Everest

You can add your own caption to this.

            The more time I spend in the city, the more I like it.  All of these cool attractions with green, rolling hills in the background is an awesome balance of urban and rural.  Now I just need to balance spending all of this money with getting a job… wish me luck!          

“To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before.” –Robyn Davidson, “Tracks”

         We finally made it to Dunedin!  We arrived by bus at around 9:30 p.m. and had to lug all of our stuff several blocks to a hostel in the center of town.  My keen sense of direction took us the long and less charming way to the hostel, which was at the top of a flight of stairs.  Super.  The room was cold and ugly but we didn’t care much because we were so tired.  And that began a night of peaceful slumber… so I thought.  I was having a dream about drinking a Coke with my mom in the Caribbean was suddenly I sat on a large thorn and woke up.  I ran my hand across the sheets to get the thorn out of my bed, but instead found a hornet that had just stung my thigh.  I woke Brad up and he fearlessly defeated the beast with my pink Nike.  If you want a funnier telling of the story, check out Brad’s blog.  I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who’s been stung by a bee who crawled several feet into bed with her in the middle of winter. 

Brad: 1, Bee: 1, Liz: 0

         Needless to say, the next day we were out of there and once again lugged our stuff (this time up a hill!) to my new favorite hostel, Hogwartz.  It’s a huge old house where the Catholic bishop used to stay when he came to Dunedin (see pic of the Cathedral next door below), and it couldn’t be run by nicer people.  Bonus: they have 2 adorable jack russells that run around scavenging in everything they can find: trash cans, kitchen crumbs, my purse… 

Bella and Asterix, the Hogwartz dogs

Brad and Asterix

Lobby

Cathedral view from lobby

         However most of the time you’ll find us at the wifi connection, wildly searching for job and flats:

         I’ve thrown my resume out a few places and have a few opportunities I’m waiting to contact including: muffin seller (how good would I be at this?), newspaper delivery person, florist assistant (although this may lead to more bee stings), retail worker, and café barista.  Thanks for spending all those thousands of dollars on my college degree, mom and dad; I’m off to sell muffins!!

         The apartment search has been our other big task.  We really want to live in the neighborhood of St. Clair, which is by the beach and has a few restaurants, bars, and shops and a nice safe community feel.  The bus ride into the city where we would most likely work is about 15 minutes- sweet as! 

Serious surfer- it's about 40 degress here.

We really want to do a house share so we can live with kiwis and get connected to the area, so we were really pumped to see a place in St. Clair on Thursday.  The house was beautiful, but had only one roommate who was older, not exactly what we had in mind.  Next we checked out a place in the city that included the stunning feature of having to walk outside to get to the toilet and shower.  A toilet and shower that anyone could walk off of the street and use.  For those of you that know me, I have a minor phobia of a bum sneaking into my apartment and this only fed my fear.  I think it stems from when a certain homeless man screamed at me to, “BURN!” when I was 10 years old and my NYC cop uncle proceeded to laugh hysterically while I tried to physically crawl back into my mother’s womb.  Anyways, back to Dunedin…

         The city is super cool and the more time I spend here, the more I love it.  “Dunedin” is Gaelic for “Edinburgh,” and the city is actually modeled after it.  You can see from pics below that the city has sort of a European feel by the buildings.  Maybe I should apply to be an architect; I’m clearly such an expert :-)

Cathedral in the city center

New Zealand you just don't understand coffee.  I have yet to find the perfect cup.

View of The Otago Harbor from our room

Clock Tower

Brad prancing around the city

The train station

         We woke up this morning to a few teeny snowflakes, and for the rest of the day it has proceeded to go from snow, to hail, to wind with hail that is trying to blind me.  We were supposed to see a house in St. Clair but the buses stopped running, so that’s been postponed until tomorrow.  I talked to a girl in one of the cafes we hid in to get warm (few places have good heating here- it’s cold all the time) and she said she hasn’t seen snow like this in Dunedin for 4 years, so everyone- kids and adults alike- is really excited and running amuck in the snow.  The city has pretty much shut down- banks, shops, buses.  I just found out that Wellington has snow for the first time since 1995 and even Auckland has snow, which hasn’t happened since 1930.  So it’s pretty fun to be here in “The Great [2 inch] Blizzard of 2011!” 

Passenger pushing his stuck campervan before running to catch up and jumping back in...

It’s really surreal so see weather like this in July, but since we got here I’ve pretty much lost all sense of date, time, and season so I’m just going with the snowy flow.  However, I’d take bundling up in this polka dotted fleece blanket over hugging an AC and sweating to death!  Stay cool, Northern hemisphere!

“Adventure is not in the guidebook and beauty is not on the map. Seek and ye shall find.” -Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose

         Since the last time I wrote, it’s definitely been smooth-sailing (at least relatively so) in the campervan.  We decided to bail on the idea of folding up the bed each night and setting up the table.  Now we just throw our stuff everywhere and are happy as clams!

         We got a fairly early start and drove the remaining 3 hours to New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington.  We managed to catch the last 30 minutes of the farmers market and bought some fruit and veggies as well as ate some Indian food from one of the vendors.  Our next stop was the highly recommended City Gallery Wellington, which is the city’s modern art museum.  Major flop: it was small and the art left much to be desired.  Although judging by what I saw, I could probably have my own exhibit using pictures that 1^st graders have drawn for me.  Hmm…  Next we walked up Cuba Street to check out the shops and restaurants and then headed back to our camper for a stay at a holiday park just outside of the city.  Wellington was a really cool city to visit, but got a little shady at night so we were happy to call it a night a little early.

Wellington market

Fishing boat coming in for the day

I spent a brief stint as a street performer...

Where are all the Utz chips bags?

Cuba St.

5.12c

Wellington sunset

         A 6 a.m. start awaited us on Sunday morning, as we had to be to the ferry by 7.  The 3-hour ride from The North to South Island was fine, but I had to move to the center of the boat to keep from getting sick, haha.  We drove off and headed straight for what was our favorite stop, Kaikoura, where we spent 2 nights.  The town used to be a sleepy crayfishing village, but is now fairly big tourist attraction due to the wildlife.  About 5 miles outside of town, I pulled over because I thought I saw a seal.  Upon closer inspection, I saw this:

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We had stumbled upon a colony of about 300 seals!  The English language doesn’t provide me words to describe how awesome and cute these guys were, so I’m just going to post a ton of pictures and leave out the fact that I cried a little when I saw them:

"Yes, believe your eyes, it's 300 angels!"

"Join our colony, Liz!"

"Go ahead and hug me, I'm not looking."

"I'm a baby."

"Look at my yoga."

"I'm only pretending to be shy so you'll come and hug me..."

"Take that National Geographic."

"We love to scratch!"

"I'm so cute that the last shark that tried to eat me ended up giving me candy instead."

        

When we got into town, we headed to an overlook that allowed you to see both sides of the Kaikoura peninsula and the gorgeous mountains in the background.  We did a hike along the peninsula right around sunset and it was really beautiful.  At the base of the hike was another seal colony, which was not nearly as cool as the one mentioned above.  In fact, when we pulled up I thought there was a dead seal lying in the parking lot there but he was just sunbathing.  Even though the signs said to stay 30-feet away, I just know in my heart that that seal wanted me to hug him so bad.  It took a lot of self-control.

They're hard to see, but there are 2 snoozing (not dead) seals on either side of me.

Pied Oystercatcher

         The next morning we did a whale watch and saw 3 sperm whales, a few seals out at sea (not dead-looking in a parking lot), huge albatross, and lots of other pretty sea birds.  While the whales were super extra magical, they weren’t quite as animated as the seal colony (in case your wondering, I loved the seals), but I took probably the best picture I’ve ever taken of one of the whale’s tails going underwater (*me patting my back*).

Using a microphone-like machine to track the whales

Big Ol' Albartross (about a 6 foot wingspan)

albatross

Sperm whale, about 32 feet long

My masterpiece (*pat, pat*)

         We checked out a cave which was just okay, but I’m convinced a real live hobbit was our tour guide, then went out for dinner before we hit the hay.  Our last day was just driving to Christchurch to return the beloved campervan (good riddance!) and catch a bus down to Dunedin, where we want to stay rooted for a few months.  Sadly this means back to the real world of apartment and job hunting, but I’m excited to see what the city has in store!

P.S.  I posted pics of Tongariro on my last post- check out Mt. Doom from LOTR.