Rocky Balboa has nothing on us!

For our last day in Dunedin we were off to the World's Steepest street, but first we had to find our way through the Dunedin Botanic Gardens. A twisted maze of paths, that is probably absolutely gorgeous in the summer, but now is merely beautiful. But it also had an aviary, which always makes for a fun time.

Eventually we did find our way out, but we only got lost again trying to navigate the city streets. Oops, well, 2 wrong streets, a couple of backyards and we did emerge on to Baldwin Street-aka the World's Steepest Street!

We also met a rather interesting old man, who runs the stairs 60 times a day, for as many years. 

Yup, that's him, skipping down the hill, happy as can be.. 

On the side note, I'm back in Christchurch for the night, I'm frantically trying to get stuff together to be ready to leave tomorrow morning for a week and a half, eep! 

Day Three: Sick

I woke up feeling absolutely terrible, and it only got worse as the day went on. Why does sickness always have the worst timing?
Arely's flat doesn't have heating, nor is it insulated-basically it meant that when we woke up we could see our breath. Brrr..

We quickly dressed in as many layers as possible, ate breakfast and headed out. As we walked through the door, it became apparent that it was actually warmer outside, then in the flat.
We first walked to the octagon, which is their city center, to visit the info center-since we really didn't know what to do with our day. Dizzy and not able to focus at all, I just followed Katelyn and Illona, and made some sort of comment when needed. We originally had planned to visit the peninsula, but we would have had to join a tour group-at $80 a person! Scratch that, we needed something a wee bit cheaper.

We ended up at the Cadbury Chocolate factory. Mmm, so good! Our tour guide, Carol, handed out chocolate the entire tour. It ended with not one, but TWO shots of liquid mild chocolate! Can you say delicious?

Hair nets are all the style!

Driving the milk truck-I could so do this job!

After reluctantly leaving,  we walked to the train station to eat our packed lunch. The station is absolutely stunning, though it made me feel like I was in the United Kingdom, not NZ. 

After lunch I felt even worse, so I told the girls that at the next museum I would sit and wait for them while they went through it. However, the settlers museum proved much too captivating. The first exhibit was on War Brides, which is something I was very much interested in, having just finished a history paper on NZ Women in WWII. The exhibit really brought alive all of the research I had done on the subject. After that was a big exhibit on NZ settlers(hence the museum name), including 3-4 rooms dedicated towards the ocean journey-which included a room completely done up as a steerage cabin. It was dark, creepy, and definitely not for the claustrophobic, but really neat at the same time. The last exhibit was on toys from the 70s', toys that we could play with. How do you entertain 3 college girls? Give them children's games/books. 

Katelyn won by one stick :(

We then headed back to the flat for a little bit of a break. Hoping to feel better, I ended up taking a 1 1/2 hour nap. It didn't work. But when I woke up it was time for Velvet burger! Arely had been telling us about Velvet burger since Queenstown's Fergburgers. She seemed to think they were better, hmm. Guess we will just have to see about that!

Unfortunately, my burger was merely average, and therefore not comparable to Fergburger. But the Kumera(sweet potato) Chips(fries) were to die for! 

Afterwards we walked around town for a bit, and then finished off the night was massive Ice Cream cones. Mmm, ok, even through I was completely out of it, and not able to even walk straight, it was a excellent way to end the night

That's a single cone, not a double, or a triple, just a single

Wonderland is apparently through a hobbit door

After sleeping in until nine(whoo!) we ate breakfast and packed our bags. However, our bus didn't leave until noon. So we checked out of rooms, but left our packs under Tigger's watchful eyes while we walked through Oamaru. We found that we had wandered to the Oamaru Public Gardens. None of us had very high expectations, since Oamaru is a pretty small town. But, with nothing better to do, we continued on.

After passing through the Iron-rote gates the street noise fell away, and we entered a land of greenery mixed with the scraggly grey/brown winter tree branches, twisting across the sky. The park gardens were much bigger then we had first expected, paths branched out every which way. At first we were indecisive, but then I, a touch impatiently, took the right path. It quickly came across a red bridge, and suddenly we were in China.

Ponds, bridges, and even a gateway-welcome to China!

We quickly passed through the China section to walk through  the garden all on on Plants of New Zealand. Further on we met a random red rooster hanging out with a flock of ducks. Thinking he was just slightly species-confused, we gave him only a passing ponder. 

 

On we walked, past beautiful flowers and exotic plants.  All of which are along a bubbling creek on one side, and a multitude of ponds on the other. Eventually we found an aviary, filled with cockatiels, a peacock and silky chickens. The next building housed  parakeets, lovebirds..and pigeons. Such a strange thing to see in the middle of  what basically is a public park. Well at least we now knew where the confused rooster had escaped from.

Past the aviary, we walked through a green house, until we came to wonderland!

  Wonderland turned out to be our last top since we had to get back to the Empire hotel for lunch, before catching the bus to Dunedin!But first, here's just a couple more pictures from our walk through the gardens.

I might have tried to climb a tree..and failed :(

Arely met us once we arrived at the Otago University. Otago's campus is so much prettier then Canterbury's! Where we have concrete blah, they have stone work and beautiful buildings!

We walked through the campus and across the street to the Otago/Dunedin Museum. There, we learned about Pacific island history and saw some terrible/scary stuffed animals. Afterwards,  it was a quick walk up the street to get ice cream. Too lazy to go out and actually do something, we brought fish and chips back to the flat and watched a movie.

Here's a Penguin, There's a Penguin, Everywhere a Penguin, Penguin.

Katelyn, Illona and I started out our trip  uberly early in the morning- I am definitely starting to perfect the art of rolling out of bed and being ready to go.

Illona is definitely prepared with her coffee and backpack baby

We took the nakedbus from Christchurch to Oamaru- about a 3 1/2 hour bus ride. We're spending the night in the Empire Backpackers hotel- aka hostel. This cute little hostel is downtown, and filled with victorian age pictures, and randomly patterned carpets. It's managed by a cute little elder women and her  much spoiled cat Tigger. It definitely has character, but it's clean and everyone(including Tigger) is super nice. 

The Empire Hotel door greeter, aka Tigger

After finding our room and settling in, we walked down the road to the cheese factory for lunch. Unfortunately, they don't serve lunch anymore(or the cheesecake we kept hearing about, drat) but we decided to share a sample cheese board between the three of us. The board had six different kinds of cheese arranged from mildest(brie) to strongest(their world famous, award winning Windsor Blue). From the first bite of brie I was gone. Every single piece of cheese just kept geting better and better until the end when I bit into their Windsor Blue, which tasted like heaven. 

Heaven

After the cheese factory we decided to go visit the penguins. But first, since we had a little bit of time left until the penguins returned to shore, we wandered through the historic(Victorian era) Oamaru. The 3-4 story tall stone buildings certainly made it feel like the era along with the young boys riding around on penny farthing bicycles. Yes, you heard right Penny Farthing bicycles. You know, those ones with the giant front wheel and the tiny one behind? Intrigued, we wandered over to the shop they had come from. Inside we met an extremely enthusiastic older man, dressed in period clothing, who told us all about these strange bikes. He insisted we tour the entire building, part of which contained a board of wacky beards. It was only after the man had exhausted his tour that we were able to leave.

We left the flat part of town to go up a super steep road-still on our quest to find penguins. We made it to the top of the road, only to take a quick detour to the town's over-look for some pictures.

After snapping much to many pictures, we were off again- only this time over some slightly less steep terrain. We followed the road past sheep paddock after sheep paddock until the surround hillside gave way to hills that just rolled right into the ocean, well hills covered in sheep of course. 

We finally reached the reserve, but sadly the beach was already closed off in anticipation for the penguins to start their daily journey home. This just meant we had to hike to the overlook to start our penguin hunting adventure. At the overlook we met the daily penguin counter, who told us that it would be about 1-1 1/2 more hours before the birds would be on the cliffs. With nothing else to do, we huddled together in front of the wall to wait. 

Not quite a penguin, but still cute!

Eventually there was an outcry of "Penguin!" as the first bird waddled out of the waves. Slowly, more and more penguins approached  and then disappeared into the surrounding bush/cliff side back to their nests.

Mr. Yellow eyed penguin in his finest!

All in all, we waited 2 hours until one of the birds finally came up to it's nest. At this point we were absolutely freezing, and Illona wan't feeling very good, so we started the long, cold, and now rainy, hike back. 

Katelyn and I finished the night next to a fire watching America's Funniest Home Video's of all things...