Today started at...a reasonable hour. Last night I was passing out while typing my previous blog and that was like....at 8:30 pm. I'm not sure I made it to 9pm honestly, I just know that I was able to post, close my laptop and put it away. It was pretty close though. But then I slept SO well. Maybe a little too well? I slept until 8:15 ish this morning? There was a brief moment where I was awake and saw that it was around am, but that was short lived. And I was closing my eyes until our last minute alarm at 8:30 but slept past that - luckily only by 5 min. But that's because Sarah made sure I got up. Our AirBnB host had laid out a breakfast of cereal and toast for us which was nice, and after a leisurely breakfast, we were in the car by 10 am. It took us like 15 minutes to turn around in her long driveway with my big ass car and right side steering wheel. But then we were truly on the road. It was a semi long drive today - 4+ hours from Christchurch to Dunedin, but we didn't really have any place to be. So I took my time, continued to swear about driving on the wrong side of the road (Sarah and I kept hitting our hands on the ceiling or car - *everything is backwards* Do not like ) And vibed down the motorway Their highway is a lot more similar to america's highways than say, Chile was, but it's different enough. And everyone actually adheres to the "passing only" lane Like, if there are two lanes on the motorway, people actually stay in the left lane (the slow lane for these backwards hooligans) and ONLY get in the right lane if they're *immediately* passing someone. It's surprisingly refreshing. And suffice it to say, with the speed I was going.....SO many people passed me. For like an hour, we were in front of a red volkswagen that never passed us. But we lost our buddy when we hit a town with a stoplight and I stayed in the left lane and they picked the right lane. Goodbye Red Volkswagen. Thank you for your patience. The scenery off the motorway was....it was very pretty. Bright green hills, SO many vibrant flowers in yellows, pinks, purples, reds, oranges, even some blues. There was a lot of farmland. Lots and lots and lots of sheep and cows, horses occasionally and at least 3 instances of llamas? Alpacas? Heading South, to our West we think we saw Mt Cook. It was a snow capped mountain that was far away - but was it like, central South Island far? I'd say we're 90% sure it was Mt Cook....so it was Mt Cook. We passed a lot of small towns, and they were cute! But we didn't actually stop until we got to the Moeraki boulders. Moeraki is a village that's a little over an hour away from Dunedin, and the boulders are these Calcite concentrations that solidified into these spherical shapes and as the wind and waves erode the cliff face, they get revealed, and then they become subject to erosion themselves. This is for Jay: The way they're revealed seems just like the Petrified Forest where they're hanging out until the sand around them falls away. (That can help others too with picturing it) They're neat, but honestly, I thought there would be more? There was a picture at the start of the "trail" (beach) that had an illustration of like, *hundreds* of them. There were not that many. I can only suppose that people have taken them, some have eroded themselves, maybe some geologists have some? (I think it's the first thing, but the little blurb didn't say.) We saw a few broken ones and the breaks really show off the different material in these spheres. I may have expected more, but I also have Never seen anything like them. Not their composition, their shape.... Geology IS cool man. I wish I could tell past Emily. After the boulders, we stopped in the actual Moeraki Village at a fish and chip place. Our host last night gave us the run down on where to get fish and chips (in like, don't do restaurants, only do fish and chip takeaway places) The shop had a beautiful view of the harbor and so many people were standing around looking at the view as they ate. We had to wait for a group to leave, but we eventually got our own spot at the window. The water is truly that blue. After lunch, we got back on the main road to get to Dunedin....and then very shortly afterwards, we saw a sign for a place called Trotter's Gorge. I said something, Sarah said something, then I pretty much whipped the car into a right hand turn and we found ourselves heading to....well we weren't totally sure. It turned out to be a hiking trail/campground. The drive into the park-park was so drastically different from the main road, and we crawled our way to a sign that said Trotter's Gorge. We parked in front, walked down, and the entire way down we're asking ourselves, "Is...is this correct?" We chickened out of going down the road a bit because of the way the sign looked, and then the road was narrow and kinda steep, and I knew that if we couldn't drive down this road and I'd have to u-turn? Absolutely not. But then we found the campground, and the *actual* trail head, so we parked much closer and decided to walk down a bit. This was all on a whim so we had 0 idea what to expect, but a sign said something about a cave, so off we went. It turned out to be a very short hike - the cave was not even a km in, but we loved seeing this forest of new Zealand. And the bird song!
the birds sound beautiful here, and sometimes they are SO loud.
But we walked the trail, admired the trees, listened to the birds, and tried to take a picture in front of the cave where I didn't kill myself setting up my camera's timer and then running to stand by Sarah.
There ended up being one couple on the trail besides us, but I don't think they heard me running back and forth.
The trail may have been short, but we decided to not do the other option which was a 1.5 hour hike, and we still had to go about an hour still to Dunedin.
Started the drive again, but our detour actually took us down a backroad where we saw some more beautiful New Zealand that was less agriculture...y....
We stopped a bunch on the road.
Almost no one was behind us. And by almost I mean, no one was.....until there was someone...and then we stopped stopping.
Then we saw a scenic drive by Karitane, and that ook us much closer to the coast. Enjoyed the ocean drive as it took us closer to our destination. Stopped at a lookout point that had gorgeous but cold views (the wind was crazy!)
And then we were in Dunedin. The city is apparently a college town, and is a city that has houses all up and down the mountains - very tiered. Very cool.
Our AirBnB here has a pretty good view as well
And
it has a cat.
We were chilling in the room as we decided what to do for dinner (we arrived at long last around 7pm) and as we did that, I could hear from a door that connects to the main house the cries of a cat at the door. And *J u s t* under the door I could barely see a calico's feet.
UgH
My heart broke
I don't exactly miss Nissan yet (I mean, I do, but he's fine)
but that poor cat desperate for attention and me wanting to pet her completely unable to?
(We have a separate entrance to our room - we don't entrer from the main house, and the owners were out at the time)
So sad.
Sarah thought it was very funny that I had my face pressed to the floor trying to see under the door.
I couldn't so we just went out for food. Got a pizza at a place called Poppa's then we ran to a supermarket.
We're getting sandwich and snack stuff.
We're here for a *while*
Having a few sandwich dinners will absolutely help us from going into debt on this trip. Ha ha.
But that was our day!
We've got a pretty busy day tomorrow, and a late night planned, so until next time!
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