Stray Day 8 – Dunedin (22nd February)

After a lie in until 10am or so (not that it was required after a hardcore night of watching Road to Perdition in bustling Invercargill) and a delay due to some issue with the pickup from the Stewart Island ferry, we headed off to the Catlins and Dunedin.

First stop was Waipapa Point, to hopefully see some sea lions. There was a terrible shipwreck here in the 1880s, so they built a wooden lighthouse which is still standing. I didn't see any sea lions and most of us gave up and headed back to the bus, but one tenacious type stuck it out and found one much to the jealousy of the rest of the bus. Ah well. Then we went to Porpoise Bay to look for Hector dolphins, I didn't see any but we did find a seal on the beach. He was a bit lazy and fat, but hey, it's proper wildlife and stuff.

Off onwards with a drop-off in Waikawa, a random backwater town, I'd love to know why she got out there since the minimum time she had to stay was 5 days and a stop at Purakaunui Falls, a very pretty tiered waterfall. By this point our driver had started a forfeits game, so everyone who was late back to the bus, or said the word 'mine' had to do pushups or starjumps. Bizarrely this was the spot where a bunch of people were late back and had to do forfeits – no fun with a whole bus watching you and jeering. If you ever go here, do not use the loos – I forget the name but basically they've stuck a bowl over a very deep hole in the ground, and the person before me must have had a feed of pints the night before. Grim.

We got to Dunedin about 515, and were booked to go on a tour of Speights Brewery at 7. This led to fairly frantic showering and getting ready while Angela and Keith proceeded to complain a lot about how long I was taking! It was about 25 minutes in total, jeez. Anyway, after all that we ended up having dinner in Subway and going to the brewery where we were of course first there. I could have straightened my hair and everything (ok, probably not). The tour was very good, the guide was funny and kept us moving through the brewery quickly. All the workers had gone home so there wasn't much happening but it is interesting how they have the tour in the working brewery, with exhibition machines right next to the real deal. Then we went for a scientific beer tasting of the 6 brews currently on offer. I only sipped someone else's porter, did not like it. The light beer and the regular are nice, and they have a very interesting summer brew which tastes of apricots – would be great to have instead of cider on a summer beer garden afternoon. Then crazily we were allowed pour our own – letting 22 backpackers loose on taps seems like a bad idea, but it worked out fine. Speights have a pub on a barge in London, I'm so going there next time I'm over. It's a pub. On a boat. What's not to like (especially if they sent Kiwi barstaff as well...)

Also the guide told us it was o-week in Dunedin, i.e. first week of college (seems to be everyone not just freshers?) so we were up for a good night – to get an idea we should look up Dunedin riots on youtube. (try find the one with about 50 drunk students doing the haka for the riot police... he said it was class. Yes, students here are so wild they need the riot police. Makes freshers week back home look like a toddler's tea party). Riots eh? The perfect antidote to invercargill I guess.

Next stop (via multiple shops and atms and standing around and asking where's x, as you can imagine when trying to move 22 tiddly folk from one place to another) was a bar called the stadium, formerly the stock exchange, where it had been indicated we would get free shots and there would be jelly wrestling. Um... well I'll go with the group I guess, we had been promised discounted drinks as well. Turns out to get free shots you had to actually participate in the jelly wrestling (or... well we won't go into that now ;)) which was really unappealing. The students went for it hardcore though, some of the girls were really intense. It was almost frightening. What was frightening was how happy they all were to strip down to bra and undies in the bar to put back on their real clothes. They were about 2 feet from the ladies room... must be part of the show. We hung out there for a while, talking to various random people, including a very important farmer (his friend made sure i knew he managed 1400 cows, and most farms have only 500) but I could only focus on mocking his mullet. Seriously, I'm not sure what it is in NZ but loads of the boys have mullets, I blame Dan Carter et al and their fancy rugby boy haircuts. However since they are not underfed scrawny spotty pale chavtastic kids like the mullet wearers back home, they all almost get away with it. Almost. It's still a mullet. Dunedin was the first place I talked to actual Kiwis that weren't serving me something, which is why I especially liked it.

Next was monkey bar, which was a converted church with the dj box in the organ. AMAZING venue. The sunken dancefloor was surrounded by walls, upon which toga clad freshers danced without care for the precariousness of their position. The place was jammed, the atmosphere was electric, the choons were great – I just hit the floor and gave it loads. So. Much. Fun. Headed off coming up to 3 in a desperate search for a kebab which failed – instead the rest got chips from Night & Day. We walked up to the shop where there were two young fellas hanging around outside who I thought might know where to go leading to a question something like 'hey, do you know if there's any food places oh my god you have your hands down your pants I can't talk to you anymore'. Well he did, for no reason. Young fellas are weird. There was also a problem which had the children threatening one of our guys with getting his head kicked in for telling them to shut up, my logical response to this was that you can't possibly get into fights on a Monday (it made sense at the time) and anyway we managed to escape unscathed. i was inconsolable later to discover that what had actually happened was when asked about food, they said there was a burger place to which our guy responded that 'it's just shut up' which means closed in Northern (see what I have learned from soaps) and it all got confused from there. Literally I ended up doubled over unable to breathe with laughter in the kitchen when this was explained later.

So brewery tour, great nightclub, random hilarious incidents with locals, demented students, talking to actual Kiwis – Dunedin rocked. It may not do so when college is out, but I had a great time. Next morning we stopped on our way out at the steepest street in the world, Baldwin St. Having walked many of the streets of San Francisco, I decided to skip this one. It was hot, I am lazy, I'd probably have fallen down it in some kind of amusing (for others) fashion.

Pretty much direct back to Queenstown from here. I wasn't looking forward to it after last time, but who knows what could happen?