Dunedin and The End of A Journey

We drove through exhaustion to arrive in Dunedin around 10 where we were quickly ushered into Marguerite's queen size bed. She very persistently insisted that us three should sleep in a bed after the Stewart Island adventure. I kinda love her and immediately was asleep. At Otago University, they had only had one week off for break so they were already back at school. Unfortunately that meant Marguerite (from the first road trip) had an essay due. Once she turned it in, we were able to grab a quick lunch with her before she had to head off the class.

This is one of the buildings at the University of Otago

Dunedin is known for being a Scottish town and is considered a crazy college town. It was a nice day and so we decided to go explore. We walked to the town square and saw the beautiful architecture of the bus station as well as their many churches. Mostly we were just relaxing and exploring. It was a nice change to have good weather and not rushing off to go do anything in particular. We also walked by the Cadbury factory and it smelled fantastic.

I really like chocolate, unfortunately we didn't go in.

We wandered back to Marguerite's really cool apartment and made dinner with her housemates. This included tiny Brittany (she's 4'8 with enough energy for someone 7 ft tall) and Taryn, her kiwi host. Turns out Brittany loved Lord of the Rings and Taryn was as well and had worked as a LOTR tour guide in Queenstown. So that left us with one thing to do; watch The Two Towers. It was great because Taryn and I kept turning to each other about trivia and found that the other already knew it.

The following morning we got up to go to the farmers market in town. It reminded me a lot of Santa Cruz with fresh produce and great bread products. I got this great Lemon loaf, a bag of the best apples ever, free pasta, CHEESE! and chocolate truffle tea. Overall a good start to the final day of our road trip. We also ran into a couple of people from Lincoln and got to see Joanna from our road trip at the beginning of the year. It was really nice to have a large group of us EAP kids togeter again.

Once we got back to the house, it was really hard to get moving out. It was hard to leave the comfort of Dunedin and Marguerite's house. I've said it before and I will say it again, she is by far the nicest person I've ever met. We finally packed up Bluebird and set out from her apartment. We made a short stop at the World's Steepest Street Baldwin Street. It didn't look too bad until you started walking up it. Apparently it has a grade of 35%.

We had one more stop in mind on the way home. It's called the Moeraki Boulders. They are these perfectly round giant boulders on a beach. It was an incredibly beautiful and warm day and I definitely wished I had a bathing suit on. We hung out by the boulders just messing around for a while. I just enjoyed being at the beach, Elyse was jumping from boulder to boulder, and Lannette found a good boulder to meditate on. It perfectly described each of us.

The journey was so close to the end; we were 2 hours from home when as Elyse was driving there was a popping sound. We got outside and found the spare tire we had put on to replace the one with wire poking out of it had popped. We pulled the wire tire out again, and I changed my first tire! It was actually a lot easier than I expected and not too bad when there's 3 girls working on it. I then took over driving to the nearest town to find a replacement.

Unfortunately we stopped in a town where almost every place was closed and we were going to have to pay a special call out fee. At the last moment, the lady at the gas station rememebered Firestone closed at 5 (it was 4:45). We rushed over to find 5 mechanics having beers and watching Nascar on the big screen. As they changed our tire, they offered us beer from a bathtub in the garage. We had coffee instead. It was highly entertaining though watching them try really hard to get us to hang out for a bit. However, we were tired and just wanted to get home.

We got into Lincoln around 7:30, made our RA Paul let us into our rooms. And the journey had ended. We had traveled everywhere south of Christchurch: Lake Tekapo, Lake Puakaki, Wanaka, Arrowtown, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Stewart Island, Dunedin, then back to Christchurch once more. I had seen the most beautiful aqua lake, seen more glaciers than I can count, jumped off a cliff, found a new favorite place on horseback, experienced a waterfall up close and personal, and hiked in the worst weather imaginable. And I wouldn't take any of it back! It was an incredible journey, and while it had its up and downs, was something I will remember forever.

Heres the link to the last photo album of the road trip.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=173974&id=665896295&l=2bf6c86e68