Wanderung 22

Return to the Land of Oz

November - December 2009

Wednesday, November 18th, Dunedin and the Nature's Wonders Tour

Bob:

We hustled on deck just as our ship docked in Port Chalmers, the official port for Dunedin which lies about 8 kilometers away. The dock at Port Chalmers was quite busy. A container ship was loading on one side of us and to the other side were thousands of logs and huge piles of wood chips awaiting shipment to Korea. The sun made the wood chips actually steam a bit, a curious sight.

Monika:

The port for Dunedin is Port Chalmers about 10 miles down the bay from Dunedin. Port Chalmers seems to be mainly a port for lumber. Next to where our ship was docked was a large area full of lumber and sawdust. Logs that did not come up to snuff where turned into sawdust right then and there. As a gentleman next to me on the railing said, "I hope no one tosses a burning cigarette in there!". But the smell was a great wood smell.

Bob:

We quickly had breakfast and made a short jaunt into town to look for some wine as the wine we had brought with from Sydney had run out. We followed George Street as it seemed to be the main commercial drag in Port Chalmers, and found both a "Bottle Shop" (American: liquor store) and a grocery store that also sold beer and wine. We picked up a mild red wine at the liquor store and trundled it back to the ship, stopping off at the library to use their internet services. As had happened in Dubbo, Australia, during Wanderung 20, we were asked if we were using the internet to check our email and since we were they charged us $3 for half an hour. Since the same time using the ship's internet would have cost us $22.50, there was no comparison. We were relieved to here that Mike, our next door neighbor, had gotten our message about Monika losing her keys and was looking out for anyone using the keys on the house or car. Knowing that nothing had happened yet and that Mike and his family were keeping on eye on our place took a huge load off our mind.

Monika:

The tour we had signed up for did not leave until 11, so we decided to explore the town. It was a small town with turn of the century houses on the one main street, a beautiful church, and a grocery store. This grocery to our delight had some wine in a box, just what we needed since our supply was running low. On the way back we stopped at the library where we could do email for 1/6th the cost of the ship. (No grandson yet)

Bob:

Once back on the ship we dropped off the wine, picked up our binoculars and cameras, and had a small quick snack at the buffet as we knew our tour did not include any meal service. Debarking once again we met our bus driver and tour guide Gerald, who was driving a smallish 16-passenger bus, and we set off for our "Nature Wonders" tour. Gerald gave a running commentary on the sights we were passing along the way out to Otaga Peninsula, and as a lifelong native of the area he was a veritable font of information. The boathouses built on stilts on the side of the bays, for example, could no longer be constructed and so the existing ones had become rather valuable property, often being converted to shops, snack bars, and so forth.

Another curious story concerned kids who were caught "tagging" bus stops with graffiti. When brought up for trial, the kids were given the choice of going to jail or being mentored in an apprenticeship to a real painter. Understandably, most of the kids chose being mentored by artists and, surprisingly, after completing their formal training they were given free license to go back and paint the bus stops artistically. Once the ex-graffitti artists had done so, they now had a sense of ownership and dissuaded other kids from marring their artwork. Many of those erstwhile juvenile delinquents went on to university and careers as real artists, and then served to apprentice the following generation of young "taggers". Apparently, that all-volunteer system works so well that our guide claimed that if graffiti does occur it is repainted to the correct artwork in a matter of hours! We saw those artistically painted bus stops all along our journey out on the peninsula, and I can vouch for the fact that when we later drove through Dunedin I saw absolutely no sign of graffiti, so apparently the system works. What a creative solution to the problem.

Monika:

By the time we got back to the ship, we decided to have a bite to eat before our "Natures Wonders" tour since it did not include lunch. We then went down to the pier to assemble for our tour. We were only 11 people in a small bus. Bob even got the front passenger seat so he had a great view and could take pictures easily. From Port Chalmers we went up the bay to Dunedin that sits at the end of the bay. We drove through the city and our driver told us a little about the history. Dunedin was started by Scots who tried to lay it out like Edinburgh. When the engineers encountered a hill right in the middle, they were told to just level the hill, to keep the Edinburgh-like layout. This they did. So now there is a church where there used to be a hill.

From Dunedin we drove along the other side of the bay to the very tip of the Otega peninsula. It was low tide and in many of the small inlets were dry. Our driver told us that in the early years whalers used to sail into one of those smaller inlets because they could render the whales and repair their ships at the same time. We also stopped very shortly at a Maori church and meeting house. The Maori own some of the land on the upper part of the peninsula and rent it to people to build houses. It is like in England, you own the house but must rent the land.

Bob:

Once out to "Nature's Wonders", a farm at the end of the peninsula, we transferred over to small 8-wheel drive dune-buggy type vehicles for our actual drive into the wildlife observation areas. Unexpectedly, driving around in those buggies was as much fun as a barrel of monkeys. We went rocking and rolling through mudholes, up steep hillsides, and along deeply rutted and extremely bumpy roads, so we were chucked about a good bit almost like a roller coaster.

Monika:

We finally reached the tip of the peninsula where we drove up the hill to "Natures Wonders". On our way up we saw a hawk circling above us. At "Natures Wonders" we went onto big 8 wheel dune buggies to see some rare animals. The owner is trying to keep the area on the Pacific pristine so that furry seals and the rare yellow-eyed penguins can breed. The dune buggies would take us to these places. The lanes we drove on were definitely un-improved and steeply graded. It was almost like a roller coast ride. We stopped at the highest point and had a wonderful view over the pacific coast and also the bay leading to Port Chalmers and Dunedin.

Bob:

Our first stop was a small seal rookery right down on the coast. The rugged rocky coastline apparently is just what seals like to flop on when they come up out of the sea, and with the waves crashing on shore and the long kelp twined in the rocky pools it reminded me very much of parts of the California coastline. One thing we noticed right away as we approached was the "eau de seal" smell that wafted up to our observation point from the rocky headland below.

We were thrilled to see two males fighting for dominance in one pool, another large male watching over two seal pups who were apparently just learning to swim, two females basking drowsily in the sunlight, and one year-old pup who had decided to take a snooze right beside the parking lot. I just went nuts trying to photograph all of the action going on with my telephoto lens while Monika took more the wide-angle and panoramic shots.

Monika:

From the highest point we went down to the lowest point, the beach where the seals were. We saw two youngsters cavorting in a small tidal pool, watched over by a male who made sure we did not come too close. Two other males seem to be fighting at first, but shortly afterwards one went slinking off. And up on the land a youngster was waiting for its mother to return with some food. It was all a lot of fun to watch these animals this close.

Bob:

From the seal rookery we went to see some penguins from a kind of bird blind that had been built alongside the bay where the penguins like to roost. This species of penguin turned out to be rather small and they were still nesting in their burrows that were located relatively far from our observation point, so I just couldn't get decent pictures. That was a bit frustrating, but still we did get to see them. After yet another roller-coaster ride back to where our tour bus awaited, we reboarded and set back off for Dunedin.

Monika:

From the seals we drove up to overlook a beach were the penguins nested. The owner of this place had build a bird blind that took us closer to the Penguins without being seen by them. And indeed at the end we could see a mother brooding on an egg. I was glad I had brought my binoculars because they brought them even closer. I was enthralled but we did have to go back up. On the way up, our guide opened a couple of doors, where we could look at some small blue penguins. They stared at us, but did not seem to be disturbed by us.

Bob:

On the way back, we drove up and over the ridge that forms the backbone of the Otago peninsula. At the top of the ridge we had some marvelous views of the "wild" side and some of its deserted and all but inaccessible beaches.

Back in Dunedin, our driver gave us a driving tour of the small city together with a ten-minute stop in the Octagon, the central point of the city, so that we could walk around and stretch our legs a bit. Dunedin is dominated by the Otago University, which extends for a great part of the central business district. The thousands of students who study there also seem to dominate the local cityscape, according to our guide, but as businesses go the university certainly has less of an environmental impact than heavy industry would, for example.

Since we were on a mini-bus, our driver took us back to the ship via an alternate route that followed the ridgeline on the peninsula above the dock. We passed a monument to Scott, the British explorer who died after reaching the South Pole in the Antarctic, and the overlook adjacent to the monument gave us good views of our ship below.

Monika:

After seeing the penguins, we drove back to the house from where our little bus picked us up. On our return trip we took the round-about way along the ridge of the peninsula rather than the shoreline. The landscape looked lush and green with rolling hills. It reminded me of southwestern Ireland but here there were a lot more trees. Still, it was beautiful.

Back in Dunedin we stopped in the middle, the Octagon with a Robert Burns statue of course, for some quick pictures. After that we drove through the university to the steepest road in the world, and boy it sure is. Then we drove along a small road across a hill back to Port Chalmers. It had been quite a trip, and being in a small bus gave us a chance to drive along roads the big buses can't go.

Bob:

That basically wrapped up our very nice tour, but we were getting tired and hungry by that time, so we were quite happy to reboard the Sun Princess. We had a quick dinner at the buffet and then watched the ship steam out of port past some albatross rookeries. The rookeries turned out to be small, rocky cliffs well-decorated with bird guano. Not my cup of tea, but I suppose there's no place like home even when you're a bird! As our ship headed out onto the open sea again, we retired belowdecks for the night.

Monika:

It was 4:30 by now and we were starving. So we just went up to the buffet for dinner, We then watched the ship steam up the bay to the entrance. Below the lighthouse is one of the few landbased rookeries of the Albatross. Besides all the birds on the cliff a few were up in the air and we again admired their graceful soaring. But it was windy and cold up on the top deck, so we quickly went below and retired for the day.


 

Copyright 2010 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Cruise around New Zealand Map of Drive through Victoria Epilog

November 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
December 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30

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