Up about 7:30, showered and breakfast, had bacon and eggs, and real hashbrowns! Kitchen was pretty smokey when I was done. Packed my car, then checked out of the hostel and walked around downtown Oamaru taking pics. Amazing, historic downtown, with beautiful old limestone buildings. Walked by a bakery and bought some muffins and a chocolate/caramel square.
Left about 10:30, headed south on SH1, and stopped a few kilometres north of Moeraki to see the Moeraki Boulders, large, very curious, almost spherical boulders on the beach, formed out of bits of animal or plant matter in the mudstone, later to be revealed by erosion of the of the mudstone by the ocean. Quite neat.
Then drove to the Moeraki town and went to Kaitiki Point and saw seals and found two penguins in their den rigth beside the walking path and got a decent picture of them in their hole.
Continued on to Dunedin and got there sometime, not sure when, stopped at the Countdown parking lot and walked around a bit to find my bearings. The city centre is organized around an octagon (the centre street is shaped like an octagon, is the name of the street: Octagon). The streets radiate out from and around the octagon. Figured out how to get to where I wanted to go (Elm Lodge), and drove there and checked in. Cheapest hostel I've been at, $15.00/night. They got thumbs up from Let's Go, but shouldn't have. It's not a particularly nice place, just average.
Walked downtown to the old train station and booked a seat on the Taieri Gorge Railway, supposedly one of the world's greatest railway journeys. $56 return trip from Dunedin to Pukerangi, 58km away. I go tomorrow at 12:30.
Walked to Cadbury World, and did the 3:00 tour of Cadbury's chocolate factory for $14 and got lots of chocolate to boot! If I was smart, I would have lagged behind the group and snatched up even more chocolate bars. Haha, it was intersting, anyway. They are busy making hollow chocolate eggs for next Easter. They make the hollow eggs 24/7 from June to end of January to supply enough eggs for the Easter 2004 season. WOWSERS!! Tour ended about 4:00, and we were ushered into the Cadbury store, where we could buy Cadbury "things" and chocolate at reduced prices than store prices. I should have stacked up on chocolate bars. I did buy a Cadbury soft cooler, great for keeping my refrigerated goods while I'm on the road.
Then went to Dick Smith Electronics (the big electronics chain in NZ, and Australia too) and bought some headphones for myself.
Then went to subway for supper, then back to hostel and watched TV. WAtched, for the first time ever, a guy going for $1,000,000 on the Aussie version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". He took the $500,000 because he wasn't sure of the final question, although he had an idea. After he got his cheque, he locked in his "guessed" answer, and he was right, he could have had $1,000,000. The host was sure trying to get him to go for it, though.
I was going to head over to Queenstown and do some more life-defying stunts, but realized how close to the bottom of NZ I am, so I'm going to head around the south coast, the area known as the Catlins and then to Invercargill instead. It's supposed to be beautiful, NZ best kept secret, and a very remote area.
Beautiful day, sun shining all day, but the wind was frickin' cold.'
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