13th October - Dunedin to Allanton

After the fun of yesterday, it was quite a grim start to the day. I was tired because it had rained a lot during the night and we'd been parked under a tree. There are few things more annoying than the loud and irregular tap-tap-tapping of water falling from leaves onto the metal roof of a van - like sleeping in a room full of amplified dripping taps. It's particularly annoying when sleep is the only thing keeping your mind off needing the loo.

Added to that, it was a cold, grey, windy day of the sort I haven't seen since we left the UK. I've always struggled with the cold and hate feeling bundled up, hunched and tense against it but it's interesting to see how much more it bothers Matt now he's lost his insulating layer.

We made our way down to Dunedin city centre for a day of indoor sight-seeing, starting with the art gallery. There was the usual mix of talent, interest and obscurity but we spent most time at an exhibition called, 'Breaking Down the Fourth Wall' - more for its documentary content than its artistic merit - that focused on alleged 'first contact' with the Tanahashi tribe.

After lunch we went to the Otago Museum where they had a great display of items from Edmund Hillary's Everest expedition, including the second-hand camera he used to take the iconic summit of placing the flag at the summit.

General stars of the show for me were the animals there though. I was gob-smacked at the size of lots of things including: a stuffed sunfish in the foyer, which was only half the maximum size; the skeletons of native moa birds, now unfortunately extinct due to being munched up; and the stuffed albatross, particularly the baby one since it was bigger than most small dogs. We also got to see the dinosaur fossil from Shag Point which was pretty impressive.

We were still happily exploring the museum when the call that it was closing came so we went to Moana swimming baths. There were huge and really well layed-out with lots of lane swimming organised by speed. I stayed in one of the slow lanes of the shallow end doing laps until I got tired, then I skirted the diving pool (with just an envious glance) and joined Matt in the fun pool to play in the 'lazy river', waves and toasty warm spa pool.

Last stop in the city was Baldwin Street - the steepest hill in the world. We drove up it, climbing to a height of 47m over 161m length. With an average gradient of 1 in 3.41 and the steepest gradient of 1 in 2.86, it would be good to see the 'Baldwin Street Gutbuster' foot race that happens there every year. We wouldn't fancy living in one of the houses at the top during snowy weather though. There were even several little shops selling certificates to testify to the achievement of driving up it.

After seeing the albatross in the museum, I was really keen to see some real ones that weren't full of straw with plastic eyes, so we took the scenic drive right along the edge of the sea to Otago peninsula where there's a colony. We didn't realise it was a privately owned colony until we were over halfway there so we trucked on anyway in the hope that that we might get to see some flying around.

It was dark when we got there so we just took a little wander along the path around the tip of the peninsula. We didn't see any albatross I don't think (although I did see something pretty huge flying up ahead before the darkness fell too thick) but we did spook a mass of seagulls that Matt kept insisting might be albatross. I got a closer look at them as they dive-bombed near my head - especially the one he was annoying by shining a torch at at the time - so I'm certain they were just gulls. It was freezing cold, so windy it was hard to walk straight and the gulls were still making a horrid noise and acting odd so we didn't stay for very long.

We took a  steady drive back because the lack of barriers between us and the sea made driving in icy rain just that bit more dangerous.

Instead of staying at Dunedin we decided to make a little bit of progress so got on to the highway out of the city. We soon hit roadblock where the police were stopping to breathe-test them. The policeman was pretty rude to Matt because he thought that had to pull over rather than stop next to the guy and block off all the traffic. Matt was very polite back though and we were soon on our way - Matt was just a bit disappointed because he felt he should get a minus reading for not having a drink for so long.

It was getting late though so we didn't drive very far before we felt it was time to rest. We took a street away from the main road and up the hills and stayed on the first flat patch we could find. It was muddy and the wind was blowing a gale so we crawled straight into bed and wrapped ourselves in blankets.