12-7-10

Woke made a quick breakfast and coffee and it's south we go!  We were both excited to see some new territory and as we drove past the Canterbury Plains the scenery became much more scenic with hilly farm/pasure land, small farm houses, the beach on one side and the mountains on the other.  The towns were all old and unique, we discussed how neat it was that they keep up their towns so well even the little ghost towns had nicely painted building and manicured landscaping.  On a quick side trip off the main road we came across the Moeraki Boulders, they are these random spherical boulders on just a small 100 meter section of beach, they range in size from 6 feet in diameter to 2 feet in diameter.  It was really fun to explore these boulders, they are so perfectly round they look man made.  some have viens running through them of some other mineral in kind of comb shaped design and some are split in half or more pieces and you can see the comb on the inside and if very strong put each piece back together to complete the sphere again.  It was really cool.

shabree learning the hard way what happens when you disobey the signs and get to close.

Once back in the car it was off to Dunedin and back to winter.  We pulled into Dunedin about 4 in the afternoon and quickly got a camping spot somewhat out of the raging wind.  We thank our lucky stars we were not tent camping while walking past a few tents that were basically flat from the wind and one right by our camp that was completely broken… long night!  We then went to the front office and booked our Speights Brewery Tour, from what we heard this is a must do in Dunedin.  We took the bus into town and toured the brewery, it was neat because it was still in the original location (over a hundred years there) and used a lot of the original brass tanks.  The tour was kinda cheesy but interesting , one neat point is all the water comes from a 70 foot bore under the building, this bore is so healthy with ground water that there is a tap on the outside of the building that people can fill up jugs of fresh untreated spring water for free, they ask for a 10 cent per liter donation that is donated to charity, the collect and donate about $100,000 a year from this tap donation.

After the tour we were both starving so we got a beer and a pretty disappointing dinner there.  We shared  our meals of  lamb and the pork schnitzel and they lacked in any kind of taste (so british) but it was needed food after the free beer tasting and long drive of the day.  After that is was a long walk home to the campground in the howling wind and to sleep.  On a side note we walked past an auction building that had some items in the window to entice clients, and one in particular really got our attention. It was a large glass framed box, inside was two stuffed seagulls with two baby stuffed seagulls, in sea cormrit, and another sea bird I did not know the name of, they were displayed with seashells and reef around them. We laughed and could not imagine anyone buying this ridiculous thing, then was disturbed by someone spending hours of their life making this thing. Crazy Kiwi's!