We had high hopes for Dunedin since it is named after the adorable city of Edinburgh, but we were pretty disappointed. Besides a few nice buildings, such as the train station and a cute octagon shaped square there was noting to it.

People dress wierd in Dunedin

We thought there would be lots to do and had allocated a whole day to the town but were rather bored. We went to the art museum to fill time, which was nice, had lunch and then drove north. Before we left the town we had to go to the advertised “steepest road in the world” which is located in Dunedin. It is called Baldwin Street and the slope is 19° at it’s steepest. It definitely looks steep and daunting when you drive up. Only Simon, the avid hiker wanted to climb up and we drove, twice, since Hendrik thought it was so fun. It’s worth a drive up and down, which must annoy the residents, but the pictures don’t do it justice since it’s hard to take a picture of a slope.

Me driving down the steepest road in the world.

On the way we stopped at the famous tourist site of the Moeraki Boulders which are huge perfectly round rocks by the sea. There we encountered more tourists than at any other site along the southern route. The boulders were spectacular and we had fun climbing and jumping from them.

I had fun directing a photo shoot.

Later, we stopped in Oamara for coffee and the old part of town was adorable, much nicer than Dunedin. Further on our way we stopped in Timaru for dinner and had the hardest time finding a restaurant. We walked up and down the whole main street and only found three. One Indian, one Thai, and one really pricy one that claimed to be the best in town but it was out of our budget. We went to the Thai place which was jam-packed, and had to wait for an hour to get our food, but the food was good. Other than in the restaurant the town was a total ghost-town and it was a Friday night.

We frequently saw farms of this interesting animal but don't know what it was.

Throughout the night, I woke up numerous times to pelting rain and by morning it was still going. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take a “rain day” because we had a schedule to keep. Solemnly we headed down the Southern Route and when we reached our first scenic stop – Waipapa Point, the rain had miraculously stopped. It was a beach where fur seals came to rest, but our expectations were not too high since we had been unlucky to see many animals on our trip. We were pleasantly surprised to see quite a few fur seals, and I had never seen the animal so up close and personal before.

By the next stop, Curio Bay, it was partly sunny.  It was a petrified forest and it was not only interesting for the fossilized wood but also for the many penguins which lived on it.

Right next to Curio Bay was Porpoise Bay, where ironically there weren’t any porpoises but the bay was famous for Hector’s Dolphins which came to play there. They didn’t come to close but we were able to spot their fins occasionally popping out of the water. We did see another seal there to which we got a bit too close, and he chased us away barking. It was pretty scary to see an angry seal.

One angry fur seal

Again ironically, we stopped by a waterfall in Niagara and had lunch there as well. Unfortunately we could not go to the Cathedral cave since it was only opened in low tide and we came by too late. Our last stop was Jake’s Blowhole, and I don’t know who Jake is but I concluded he couldn’t have been very important.

"Niagara Falls"

It was quite a hike to get to the hole through sheep pastures where we had to avoid sheep droppings with every step. The hole was deep but very unspectacular and not worth the hike. I think there would have to be a hurricane, tornado, or tidal wave to make the hole blow the 50 promised meters, and in that weather I wasn’t going to hike to it.

I thought this could be a set for a horror movie.

The scenery was pretty nice and we got a few close-up snaps of sheep, which is a necessity for a NZ tourist. Then we were off to Dunedin.

Awwww