Dunedin

Tomahawk Beach

WARNING: I hope you’re sitting comfortably, this gets lengthy.

I really have no idea where to begin. There are only so many ways you can say how excellent a holiday was, and I realise that people will very quickly become bored of hearing about what a great time I had, but bear with me… I’ll get it out this one time and just refer people back to this post and that post and the next one all about Oz.

So, where did I leave off?.. I had just reached Dunedin and was settling into Connie and Jenny’s flat. Another excellent week was had and you can see all of the photos I posted from that week in the Facebook album New Zealand 2012 – Dunedin (I would imagine you'll need to be my Facebook friend to see them). Over the weekend I explored Dunedin a bit including the whiskey store Connie works at in the train station and I tried a dram of the ’87 – top stuff! That Saturday evening we had all decided to head into town and to one of the busy clubs on the Octagon. Jenny, Holly and I met Connie in Scotia after her shift and moved onto a couple of bars and ended up in a place that is all a bit blurry but that I know was called Carousel. I’m not sure about anyone else, but I had a wonderful time.

Paddling!

Of course, we all woke up with hangovers. And what better way to cure a hangover than a McDonalds and a football match in glorious sunshine?...None that I can think of. I went along as spectator to see Connie and her team in action where they beat a team of sprightly 13 year olds 2-1 and I lay quietly with dark glasses to cover the bloodshot eyes. After the game we visited Tomahawk Beach, had a paddle and made friends with a very excitable dog. We were due to go camping that night – we didn’t. Instead, we watched a crap film and had an early night. Good decision making.

Mmmm...

Monday was huge. Massive. Packed full of lots of Dunedin highlights – mainly booze. Jenny and Holly both had class, so it was just me and Con, let loose. We started slow with a slap up breakfast and a stroll to the Otago Museum. We spent a while wandering around some of the galleries including a section all about Sir Edmund Hillary and a bigger photo exhibition all about the history of the Otago Daily Times newspaper and stories they’ve run over the last 150 years. Suddenly we realised we’d been there for nearly 2 hours and had to jog to the other side of town to get to the Speight Brewery Tour on time. It was totally worth it! Speights is GREAT and after a tour of all the brewing floors we ended in the free bar where we were left to ‘sample’ the 6 different types of Speights. After 45 minutes, they were all equally delicious. After the tour we had about an hour before Jenny finished at Uni for the day and our table at Scotia was booked so, of course, we went for a drink and to sit in the last of the days sunshine in the Octagon and wait for Jenny. Soon enough we were in Scotia with decisions to make – what a menu!! We all got something different so we could try a bit of everything – Connie has been working here since August 2011 so I’m sure she’s making her way steadily through the menu.

As well as excellent food, Scotia has an enormous range of whiskeys, which I enjoyed quite a lot. Next stop on this ram-jam full Monday was the Dunedin Ghost Tour… Now, you might not know this about me but I’m pretty scared of a lot of things – you might describe me as a dodgem rather than a bumper car  (thanks to Sarah Millican for that one). And I particularly don’t enjoy pitch black cemeteries with screeching possums whilst being told horrific ghost stories about dead Maori folk by a creepy pale dude with a handlebar moustache, top hat and long black coat – unfortunately for me, that’s exactly what happened. I clung on to Connie and Jenny the entire time and can’t really claim to have enjoyed it – all really rather scary!... But, I did learn a lot about lots of culturally relevant people who are all (quite weirdly) buried in Dunedin’s North Cemetery. Clearly the place to be!

Steep

Really steep!

Tuesday was a much more relaxed affair. Connie and I went to Baldwin Street – The Steepest Street in the World. We strolled up it, unlike two energetic girls who jogged up and down in the time it took us to get out the car! In the afternoon we visited Cadbury’s World which is in the middle of town – a bit smaller than the Cadbury’s World in Bournville but we were all busy dealing with our hypoglycaemic naps to grumble. We went for a bit of a drive, got ‘$5 chips’ from the chippy and had an early night.

Jen is off Uni on Wednesdays so we drove the entire length of the Peninsula to the Royal Albatross Centre, had coffee overlooking the sea in the lovely warm sunshine. We drove back via Allen’s Beach and the coastal high road – epic. Both Con and Jen had to go to work in the evening so I headed back to the house to watch Kiwi movie, ‘Boy’. Holly and I wandered into the Uni and around the library (YAY) until we found some of Holly’s mates, we went for a Rob Roy’s (MASSIVE ice cream) and eventually made it to OUSA where Jenny works and where we decided that we would go out for a few bevs once she finished. So at about 11pm we headed to Pint Night – a screechy metally/rock band later, Connie had finished work and joined us for a few.

On Thursday Connie made me sleep in a cave. I’m not joking. Luckily, it was a pretty cool cave at the end of a pretty cool beach under a sky FULL of lots of pretty cool stars. We chatted for hours, used up all of the wood, got steadily merry and slept like babies. But before I got to enjoy all of that, Connie made me collect all sorts of wood and kindling and lug it from the car all the way down the entire length off the beach – a beach call LONG Beach – and all she carried was a few beers…

Oh, and I got a tattoo, but we’ll quickly skim over that fact because I haven’t actually told the parents…SURPRISEEEEE!!! 

Before.

After.

And all too soon week two was over.

We woke up to an old fella walking his dog around the cave, said a friendly good morning, packed up all the stuff and headed back into Dunedin. Connie had to head off to work so I said my goodbyes and set to packing up my rucksack. I tagged along with Jenny and Holly as they shopped for new outfits for the big Friday night out. We went for some dinner and back to the house and as people began to arrive for pre-drinks I had to leave for the night bus to Christchurch.

All in all, an absolutely fantastic week 2. It was great to get to see where Con and Jen have made home for almost a year now and it was easy to see how it’ll be hard to leave back to Manchester in July. I arrived at Christchurch Airport sad to leave such a beautiful country after meeting some great people but VERY excited to get to Sydney and see the BFF for the first time in over 6 months.

And I think for now I’ll have to leave it there because this is already twice as long as it should be and I’ve still two weeks to tell you about!

Safe to say I’m taking my time readjusting to 9-5 life so writing a couple of catch-up blogs is my chance to go back there…as is this: Escape Plan is a GO!

But I’ll be talking to the parents about that this weekend................

Lot’s going on this week including the beginning of placement 3 – But I’ll tell you more about that next week.

Until then,

Bren x

Ps, So many highlights but here are my top 3 from New Zealand:

1 - Milford Sound on a sunny day.

2 - A boozy couple of nights in Queenstown.

3 - Camping, anywhere. But specifically on beaches or in caves.