New Zealand Vacation

Friday, February 2:
Dunedin

Lanarch Castle
Photo courtesy Google Images

Started off the morning with a tour around the castle and grounds. Wonderful place. I’ll take half a dozen in light blue. All sorts of interesting fauna wandering about the place including a few monumentally stupid angora chickens, some defensive ducks, and a sociable kitty that was most pleased to ride my shoulder all around our tour of the gardens.

Next stop: a drive out to the end of the Otago Peninsula to take a look at an albatross nesting colony. On the way, we stopped at a local electronics store and I sweet-talked them into putting my Palm on a charger for the afternoon. We got lucky with the albatrosses. Most of the time, it’s not windy enough for the birds to be flying, but it was kicking up quite a gale today, and they were out in force.

On the agenda for the afternoon was a ride on the Taieri Gorge Railway: (I felt like such a crass tourist: OK, we do the birds from 11:00 to noon, and then the railway trip, and native divers in the evening. Well, when your time is limited…) The Taieri Gorge Railway is a line that shut down as a paying transport line in mid century, but was resurrected as a tourist attraction in the ‘70’s. It hugs the cliff of one of those sheer-walled gorges along a river. Here I got to truly appreciate it because I didn’t have to pay attention to staying on the road. I spent much of the trip standing between two cars looking almost straight down into the water with only a couple of chains between me and the drop. They’d never let you do that in America. I appreciate a culture that allows one to take reasonable responsibility for one’s own safety.

I’m noticing that Jenny makes an effort (conscious?) to adapt local ac-cent. It sounds a little disconcerting coming from her lips. I’ll keep my foreigner’s identity, thanks.