Silver Peaks!

Who would have guessed that there would be a back country tramping track just outside of Dunedin? I guess we do live in NZ so it shouldn't come as a big surprise. This track is so close most people start IN Dunedin. We could have started at our apartment and it would have only added 3 hours each way. In the end we wimped out and instead opted for a 25 minute drive to the trail head. This is because I hate the environment and just didn't feel right doing something without increasing my carbon footprint, oh yeah also due to time constraints.

We started on Friday night, walking about 5 km to a camp site.

Because we didn't have to walk far we packed in a pretty nice meal for tramping. See exhibit A:

woke up the next day to this:

Started to walk toward Jubilee hut, via the devils staircase. The views were pretty awesome. One one side of the track you could see Dunedin in the distance and the other way was nothing as far as the eye could see. Crazy.

We ate lunch at the hut, and then carried on to ABC cave and Yellow Ridge. Had a few stream/river crossings along the way

For the most part it was a clear, hot day (a very novel thing in Dunedin) and we were walking through mostly scrub bush without much shade. It was probably the first time I felt thoroughly warm in months. We camped by a river and after a huge hill climb had a flat walk along the road back to our car.

Around and About

Its officially winter now, LOOK!

Winter is nice here by the coast, it is chilly, I won't lie, but nothing compared to the midwest. Gotta love being able to go for a walk or drive on a sunday and not worry about ice and snow.

The luckiest sheep in the world.

Met some new friends, learned about 'superman jumps.' You run down the hall and jump into a crowd of people who catch you. Pretty much awesome.


Remember that post about the mead? Here it is, in the bottle. We had a wee nip and it actually tasted good (and no Jim I did not go blind). Here are a few bottles, we'll see how long we can manage to age them.

Botanic Gardens

Here is a look at the botanic gardens only a 5 minute walk from our apartment.

The rose garden

Inside the tropical greenhouse

A curious Kea (native alpine parrot of NZ) who was attracted to my phone at the aviary.

And some ducks who stole the bag of food right out of my hands, ran behind a tree to hide and gobbled the whole bag down!

Arrival!

We made it!

Finally in Dunedin, here are some of the first snaps of the downtown area. Here is the downtown and Otago Habour.

Seems to be a lot of these old brick buildings, apparently they are Late Victorian and Edwardian in style. Whatever they are, they are cool.

The train station outside and inside.


And a picture of a building on the University of Otago campus, where Kate is soon to be starting at.

We'll post some more pictures and details about the city once we know them.