The Road to Dunedin - By Nina Gott

12/5/201111:35:08 AM Link 0 comments | Add comment

abroad, New Zealand, Work

As promised, I’ve tried to get my next post out a little sooner this time.  Granted, that wasn’t very difficult since Stewart Island literally took months to update. Just for those of you who aren’t aware, I’m now back in the States and settling back into “normal” life.  It’s…surreal.  I will eventually catch up to where I am now, even though I’ve got about half a year to cover, so just be patient, and it’ll all be online in the near future.  It should be a little easier to do now, in theory, since I have a bit more free time and a better-than-decent internet connection to work with.  But anyway, on with the blogging! The day after Stewart Island started bright and early.  I spent my last night at Bunker’s Backpackers and enjoyed the last of my solitude away from the social scene, and then I was off on the ferry by 8am.  The plan was to take the ferry over to Bluff and then meet up with the latest Stray bus in Invercargill.  That part of the trip was fairly straight-forward with the boat trip taking roughly an hour, and then the big orange bus was there to pick me up at the docks.  My new driver was Chase, a lively Kiwi lady known for being blunt and chatty, and our new bus was christened “Harley.”  The rest of the Stray crew had spent the night in Invercargill, so she loaded a few other stragglers and myself onto the bus to go meet up with them.  We were all pretty tired after having to get up so early, so we just stared out the windows and admired the scenery for the hour it took to get there.  I don’t know if I’ve said on here before or not, but the Southland region around Invercargill reminds me a lot of the area outside Sacramento – very flat and covered with farmland. 

We arrived in Invercargill just before 10am, and all of the other Stray guys and gals were in the process of checking out of their hostel and getting coffee.  Since that was going to take a while to coordinate, I decided to follow their lead and get a quick coffee and muffin at the dairy.  I was given a very strange look when I asked for a mochaccino again.  The guy may or may not have had to look it up in the recipe book.  As I mentioned before, Invercargill was in the middle of some weird American car tour, so I killed time by taking pictures of the various posters around town.  The clocktower was just about to go off, so I stuck around to watch it chime the hour and then continued on at a leisurely stroll with my coffee.  I’m not really sure what I would have done in Invercargill if I’d ended up staying the night…probably just read a book or something.

Everyone was finally ready to go by 10:30, so I hopped back on the bus for the trip to Dunedin.  It’s a deceptively long road trip to get there through the Caitlins and rocky coastline, so I knew that it would be a lot of time driving that day.  We weren’t scheduled to arrive until mid or late afternoon, leaving plenty of time for pit stops and scenic lookouts.  Speaking of which, the landscape changed drastically as soon as we started to head northeast.  Instead of the flat stretches of agricultural communities, we were treated to the rolling hills and scattered groves more commonly found in areas south of Auckland.  I was reminded of the same Shire-like scenery that I had glimpsed when passing near Matamata, so that was a definite improvement.  I was sitting on the right-hand side of the bus facing the ocean, so my view alternated between green countryside and the South Pacific.          

Our first stop of the day involved a walk along the beach and hanging out with some sea lions.  Chase dropped us off at the edge of a trail leading down the cliff and then went to park the bus about a mile away, next to our first bathroom stop.  She told us to meet her there in an hour, so we took our time wandering around by the ocean.  It was a bit tricky at times since there were islands of sand completely boxed in by the tide, so we had to play leap frog across the narrower bits.  The coolest things were the sea lions just chilling out right next to us and snoozing away without a care in the world.  Chase had been very clear in warning us to keep our distance from them since they are wild and can move quite quickly when they charge, but these guys didn’t seem to care at all.  They were like giant, fat cats taking a nap in the sand, and they sorted of squinted at us as we crept around them.  Oh, and apparently non-Californians call them “seals.”  I tried to explain that our idea of a seal is a relatively small thing, not much bigger than an otter, and that sea lions are something else – more like walruses without the tusks.  I normally wouldn’t care much about semantics, but to me, there’s a huge difference between walking next to a seal and walking next to a sea lion.  Moving on. 

My new Stray crew was pretty chill with a good mix of people, but they just weren’t the same as my first Stray group.  I’m sure that if I’d stayed with them a bit longer and gotten to know all of them better, it would have eventually gotten more close-knit, but we were all a jumble of different groups at that point.  So many of us had split off and recently rejoined the bus that very few of us knew anyone else.  I recall chatting with a couple of people over the course of the day and enjoying the usual swapping of stories, but I didn’t really go out of my way to befriend anyone since I knew I’d be getting off the bus in Dunedin for several days.  I didn’t really have much of an opinion about Chase, either, since she was only my driver for the one day, but I’ve heard that she can sometimes rub people the wrong way if they don’t know how to interpret her.  Oh well.  Considering that it was a gap-trip type of day, that worked out perfectly.

This whole area we were in was known as the Catlins, part of the “Southern Scenic Route” that winds through southeastern New Zealand.  It’s only in recent years that people have paid the Catlins any kind of attention because there’s nothing really there – it’s mostly just a connection point between Southland and Otago.  For that reason, it’s a cool place to look at wildlife and admire the coast without all sorts of people getting in the way.  I was more than used to that sort of thing after being on Stewart Island, so it was a nice way to ease back into civilization.  The region is especially famous for endangered species of birds, like the yellow-eyed penguin, but I’ll get to that later.  Apparently, there are some cool Cathedral Caves that you can reach at low tide around there as well, but we didn’t have the time to check those out.  Maybe next time.

Back to the beach walk.  After taking a few too many pictures of sea lions and seagulls, we loaded back into the bus to continue our trip.  Chase rattled off a few things about the oystercatcher birds that I had already discovered on Stewart Island and pointed out the little huts on the side of the road used by fishermen.  I guess they just pick up and camp out in these sheds for a few months of the year in the hopes of picking up something rare like whitebait, which is a New Zealand delicacy.  After a few more scenic lookout points, the bus made an abrupt detour into the trees, leaving the coast momentarily behind. 

Chase knew of a little shortcut to McLean Falls that went through dense forest and followed the Tautuku River, so we happily took a short walk along the river in order to find it.  It was probably around midday at this point, so a few of us broke out fruit and snacks to eat on the way.  Speaking as a ginger with a vampire-like complexion, it was nice to get out of the sun for a bit and enjoy the safety of the trees.  I’m a sucker for that sort of thing since I come from rural areas, so this was probably my favorite portion of the day.  I’ve said before how dodgy my camera can be under certain conditions or if the light hits it in a particular way.  Luckily, this was not the case for McLean Falls, and I was pleasantly surprised with how some of the shots turned out, despite the sometimes-poor lighting.  I don’t think we were on the trail head for much longer than half an hour, and then the waterfall was the far end of the loop.  It was about twenty-two meters high, but it seemed a lot taller due to a series of cascades at the bottom of the pool.  Now, I’ve seen a lot of waterfalls in my life – and a good chunk of them in New Zealand – but I’ll admit to being pretty impressed by this one.  The afternoon light seemed to hit it at the perfect angle, and the abundance of water and greenery made this the ideal rest stop of the day.  The rest of our group seemed to agree, so we took our time hanging out before walking back towards the bus.

The rest of the day followed the same pattern of “hills, coast, lookout, trees, birds, walk” with one notable exception.  Somewhere between the Florence Hill Lookout and Long Point, Chase rounded a bend in the road and came to sudden, screeching halt.  Everyone on the bus was pitched forward a few inches and acquired a sudden interest in life outside their iPods and daydreams as we all strained to see out the front windshield.  I think it would be an understatement to say that the road was “occupied.”  I was treated to my very first New Zealand Traffic Jam in the form of white as far as the eye could see.  It was like a wool sock clearance sale at Macy’s with SO. MANY. SHEEP.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many in one place before.  Or at least not in such close quarters.  A farmer and his loyal dogs were in the process of moving his herd down the road with the fuzzy things taking up both lanes of traffic.  According to Chase, he really should have had a truck or partner following at the back with a sign to warn incoming cars of the procession.  It’s a really good thing that she was paying attention because she was taking those turns at a fairly high speed and could have easily taken out half the lot before she was even aware of them.  I guess it’s fairly common knowledge that a farmer won’t really care if one or two go down, just as long as you don’t hit his dog.  Makes sense, I suppose. 

Anyway, we were suddenly stuck at an impasse and busied ourselves with taking as many pictures as possible.  Chase did her best to slowly push her way through the throng by inching along the left lane until they moved.  Sheep really aren’t the brightest bunch.  I mean, we all learned that from watching Babe, but they definitely proved that point by freaking out and trying to run under the tires instead of off to the side.  The smarter ones that did figure that out proceeded to wet themselves all over the pavement as they tried to rush the trees.  We eventually reached the end of the sheep gauntlet, but it probably took five minutes to pass this 200 foot stretch of road.  Well, I can check that off of my must-do list for New Zealand.  Now I’ve officially been stuck in traffic due to sheep.

After that little dash of excitement, our next stop was the Nugget Point lighthouse.  I didn’t really know anything about this while we were there, but I’ve since looked it up and found out that it was built in 1869 and that this area is one of the most iconic parts of the region.  Chase let us out and told us that we could walk all the way out to the Point if we wanted to or that we could just hang around for a bit.  Since we’d been in an enclosed space for the better part of the day and didn’t have anything better to do, we all unanimously began to walk.  Like everything in New Zealand, is was very natural and pretty with all sorts of birds circling around the cliffs.  We even saw a few more seals playing down in the tide pools below.  We followed the windy track around the rock face for around half an hour before coming in sight of the actual lighthouse.  Considering how old it was, it was in pretty good condition and still managed to look impressive.  We found the actual “nuggets” that gave the area its name just past the cliff in the form of several craggy islands jutting out of the sea.  A few more seals were out swimming between them in figure-eights, and I was more than happy to just sit there and watch for a bit. 

Then it was time for our last official stop before Dunedin.  When I think of this particular day, this is the incident that comes to mind, purely because it was so random and unfathomable that I still have trouble believing it actually happened.  I guess that’s why cameras were invented, though, because I caught it all on tape.  Sort of.  I’ll explain.  Just around 4pm, we pulled into a place called Roaring Bay, an area known for attracting the rare Yellow-Eyed Penguin.  I hadn’t really heard much about them before this, but they are apparently quite the Big Deal in New Zealand.  Seeing them is almost as much of an achievement as spotting a kiwi in the wild.  For that same reason, Chase parked the Stray bus at the top of the hill and invited anyone who wanted to take a look to walk down.  Given that it was the fourth or fifth stop of the day, the cliff looked particularly steep, and that we were a good half hour early (according to the sign’s scheduled prediction of when they would swim ashore), only four of us decided to venture down to the beach.  I was just too stubborn about seeing everything on the trip, and the others appeared to need the fresh air, so we started to stumble down the rocky trail.

I think “trail” would be a very generous term for this godforsaken deer path overgrown by knee-high weeds and shrubbery.  I think we all nearly fell a few times on the loose rocks or tripped over some hidden brambles on the way.  This was part of the reason why my quick walk took a rather unexpected turn.  We finally reached the beach (I think that “five minutes walk” posting at the beginning was also a bit optimistic), only to see a relatively boring stretch of sand and a few pebbles with no other people or penguins in sight.  I had thought as much, but we decided to check just to be safe.  The others said something about walking down one side, so I decided to investigate the grassy area on far side of the cliff.  In retrospect, splitting up and losing sight of each other probably wasn’t such a great idea.  The problem was that once I had exhausted my search radius and was ready to go back up to the bus, I couldn’t find the trail again.  It was so overgrown and insignificant that it looked identical to several other paths in the general area.  I followed a few of these paths, only to hit dead ends half way up and have to start again.  I’m guessing that the others must have retraced their steps better and had already gone back up by this point.  I already knew that I was late, and I felt incredibly guilty about making an entire bus of tired travelers wait around for me so that they could finally reach their destination.  That thought pushed me to press on with a new kind of desperation, and I started to create new trails when substandard ones bailed on me.  A short, relaxing walk had quickly become a stressful exercise in rock climbing.

One track started to look promisingly like the original trail, so I started climbing up that one.  It soon became apparent, however, that it was far too steep to be the first trail.  I was crawling up on all fours at that point with hand and foot holds allowing me to make progress, when I saw it. Few things in life prepare you for pulling yourself up over a ledge and finding yourself eye to eye with an adult Yellow-Eyed Penguin.  It was breath-taking.  There he was, practically standing on my right hand and staring down at me from less than a foot away.  I froze and stayed completely still, not even daring to go for my camera in case it scared him off.  For a beat of about five seconds, we just stayed there, staring at each other silently and getting a good look in, before he abruptly turned tail and waddled back into the high grass.  I just sort of crouched there in stunned silence, not quite able to process what had happened in the last few seconds, before I pulled myself together enough to begin pursuit.  He hadn’t gotten very far.  Kind of like an ostrich, he had stuck his face into the brush and left the rest of his back hanging out in my direction.  He wasn’t moving, but it was obvious that he was trying to hide and not doing a particularly good job of it.  I decided to take pity on him and stopped a good two or three feet back. 

This is the point where I finally managed to get my video camera out.  I wanted some form of proof to justify my extreme tardiness to the bus, and seeing one of these little guys in his natural habitat was just cool. He was probably around two and a half feet tall with rubbery “feathers” and the distinctive yellow stripe across his face.  “Yellow-Eyed” is probably an inaccurate description because his actual eyes were a colorless white staring out from behind the face paint.  It’s all up in my head because we got a pretty good look at each other, but, unfortunately, all I managed to get on camera was a glimpse of him through the grass.  It was so tempting to reach out and touch him because he was just past my shoelace at one point, but I resisted out of environmental responsibility.  As much as I wanted to give him a pet, he was a wild animal who was probably afraid of me, and I didn’t want to scare the little guy or inadvertently break any local laws.  When it became clear that he wasn’t going to go anywhere else until I was far, far away, I had no choice but to say goodbye and continue on. 

It took another ten minutes to reach the bus after some creative climbing, and I was flushed and sweaty by the time I got there.  As expected, they were all waiting for me, and I felt horrible about that, but they were much more forgiving when they saw the state of me and once I’d managed to gasp out my discovery.  Once I was back in my seat, all of the ones closest to me requested to see the photos and videos that I had taken, and I gladly obliged while trying to chug a water bottle.  I think the overall sentiment was awe mixed with a bit of envy, but that’s what they get for being lazy and staying with the bus. 

Dunedin was only a little ways further down the road, so we were pulling into the outer suburbs within the hour.  It's mainly known as a university town, and it's the second-largest city on the South Island after Christchurch.  Considering the mass exodus that has happened around Christchurch in recent months, however, I would say that Dunedin is now the larger of the two.  I hear that it's also gotten a lot more tourism and business lately because of people diverting there instead of Christchurch.  Having not been to Christchurch before or after the earthquake, I can't really judge, but I think people in general overlook Dunedin when it's actually a pretty cool place.

The official census gives it a population of around 125,000, with students making up about 20% of that, but it's very spread out in territory.  If you're ever looking for an easy pub quiz question, it's also known as the "Edinburgh of the South," mostly due to its Scottish heritage.  I guess it had a major gold rush boom, not unlike the one found in California, back in the late 1852, but then it started to calm down as people settled north at the turn of the century.  Dunedin sort of reminds me of a combination of Europe and the Old West with lots of stone masonry mixed in with ancient railroad lines.  It just seemed older and more interesting than a lot of other New Zealand "cities" that were the same age.  I'll go into more detail about the city in the next few posts, so I'll just skip ahead for now in the interest of saving time.

Our first stop in Dunedin was Baldwin Street, the Steepest Street in the World.  This is actually true.  It's in The Guinness Book of World Records and everything with the steepest part of the slope at 1: 2.86 (which means that for every 2.86 meters you go horizontally, the elevation changes by 1 meter).  The whole thing was an accident caused by mid-19th century planners in London.  Like many streets in New Zealand, layouts were drawn up by someone in Europe who had never been there and did not take into account terrain and climate conditions.  Great idea.  Some guy named Charles Kettle decided to just draw the whole thing up in a grid pattern and be done with it, and now it's ridiculously steep because it runs off the side of a small mountain.  It's also been the site of a lot of stupid accidents, mostly because people get drunk and decide to roll down it in a garbage can for the novelty of it.  I actually think one girl died doing something like that.  Idiots.            

Looking at it, it didn't seem all that steep, really.  I mean, it didn't look flat or anything, but I personally thought that I'd seen some streets in San Francisco that were way steeper.  I guess it's a bit of an optical illusion, because you don't really notice the gradient until you're standing about halfway up it.  Chase did a U-Turn and parked the bus at the base of the hill.  She told us that we had about twenty minutes, so anyone who wanted to climb it had to motor.  I'm pretty sure everyone wanted to do it for the sake of bragging about it later, so we all piled out onto the street and started up it.  Another funny story that I've heard about Baldwin Street involves the Cadbury chocolate factory releasing 30,000 Jaffa sweets (think little orange balls with chocolate inside) down it each year for charity.  You can sponsor a Jaffa and have your name attached to it, and if your Jaffa is the first to cross the finish line at the bottom, you get a year's supply of chocolate.  I just think it's a funny image with a giant sea of orange balls flying down the hill - what would someone think if they saw it from a distance and didn't know what was going on?  Anyways, we managed to go up and down in the allotted twenty minutes, and I'd say that it was definitely worth it.  We all got a bit tired about 3/4 of the way up, but a little workout never hurt anyone.  Victory!  

Then it was time to say goodbye to my new Straymates.  I had barely gotten a chance to know them, but we were already going separate ways.  Since I knew that I would be in Dunedin for at least three days (it ended up being about five), I wanted a quality backpackers with a good rating and, ideally, some form of free internet.  I'd found the perfect one called Ramsay's Lodge while browsing around online at Stewart Island, so I was all booked in there for the night.  The majority of the Stray group was staying at a place called the Leviathan, a larger hostel not unlike the big Base or Nomads chain.  Chase went and dropped everyone off there first, and then it was just a few other people and myself left on the bus.  She dropped off the three others at another backpackers on top of the hill, and so it was just me and her at the end.  I felt a little bad because she had to go all out of her way and give me special treatment just because I wanted to stay in a place further away, but there was really no way I could've walked there with all of my bags.  At one point, she nearly broke her back bumper going over a hill, and then I would've felt really bad, but it was luckily just a graze.  She pulled over just outside the hostel, and I didn't waste much time getting in there and settled.

I'll go into Ramsay's and more about the area next time since I've already written a novel, so I'll end with a few twilight shots of Dunedin.  I managed to catch a few more hours of daylight after dropping off my stuff, so I spent the rest of my day wandering the streets and taking pictures of whatever I could before darkness hit.  I'll have some higher-quality pictures of the same places next time, but for now, I'll leave you all with a general first impression of Dunedin.  Mine was "stone."  Thanks for reading and see you soon!