Dunedin

We had a total of four nights, three days in Dunedin doing different tours and things. Our first day was spent just shopping and eating and getting our bearings, a city was a big change after where we'd been and this was the biggest place we'd been to since Wellington weeks ago. It's a big student town spread over loads of old volcanic hills and with a strong Scottish influence, Robbie Burns glares down at everyone from the city centre. Whilst we were there the residents were building up for St Patrick's Day and the Fringe Festival so there was quite a buzzing atmosphere. This was also the start of changeable weather, it was mad hot one day freezing and wet the next and then hot again the following.

Our second day was tour packed, we went on the Seasider train in the morning up to a middle of nowhere town, as the weather was poor we didn't get the cliff top views we should have and actually slept on the way back. A healthy afternoon involved a Cadbury's chocolate factory tour and then a Speight's Brewery tour, chocolate and beer, a perfect afternoon. It has to be said the chocolate here mostly isn't to our taste, lots of marshmallow and caramel combined, we are still trying them all though, purely in the name of cultural exchange you know. The beer tour was OK, we got to taste six brews at the end, just helping yourself, we did!

The next day was a tour to see Royal Albatross, Yellow Eyed and Blue Pengiuns and Sea Lions. We saw them all which was good. The Albatross were as huge as I expected, we only saw them flying though as the tour at this stage was quite rushed to you couldn't go and view the nest sites. The penguins were in moult so were mostly hiding feeling sorry for themselves but we did see a couple waddle in from the sea which was bizarre and fab. The Sea Lions were amazing, you could get really close to a group of six young males who were play fighting amongst themselves, they can shift as well so we had to be ready to leg it if they decided we would be good to play with. The last things to see were NZ Fur Seals, there are loads of these playing in the rock pools and just entertaining themselves and us really. A good day out.