Several days in Dunedin

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Spent the past couple of days in Dunedin, a university town on the East Coast. Took a bus to get here. It was a great town- everyone was very friendly, very nice, there was plenty to do. Ended up staying a couple of days longer than I had planned.

Took a tour of the Cadbury factory- scrumptious! Got a ton of free chocolate and candy bars, always a plus.

Also made an excursion to the local farmer's market. It was the biggest one I've been to so far, probably has something to do with the fact that Dunedin is a pretty large city. Got some plums, apples, and stir-fry greens mix. Delicious.




A festival called the Dunedin Fringe Festival is happening right now. It's basically a celebration of the arts, from Scottish dancers (large amount of Scottish history in Dunedin) to street performers to singers to anything else. The pictures below are from a group called "Bikes 4 Fun." Basically these two guys have built a whole collection of abnormal bikes- recumbents, rear wheel drive instead of front, penny farthings, skateboard-bike hybrids, etc, etc, and rent out the collection for groups. As part of the Fringe Festival, they set up the collection in the middle of Dunedin and just let passer-bys have a go on them. It was really fun to try out a different selection of bikes after being on just one type for the past two months.

Check out the three-wheeled unicycle! Lot of friction. I didn't get too far riding it.

Me on a recumbant.



Scottish dancers.

Street performers- the Twisty Twins (and guy from audience on bottom)

University of Otago campus.

Otago peninsula.

Right nearby Dunedin is the Otago Peninsula, a wildlife haven. I caught some rides with other people staying at the hostel- too far to do by bike. The Peninsula features the world's only mainland Albatross breeding colony. I took a tour, got to see several Royal Albatross chicks and also 5 adult Albatross flying around. Seeing the adult albatross was a little bit unexpected- it was a really nice day, not windy at all, and the guide didn't think any of the adults would be coming back to their nests. Apparently they prefer stormy, cloudy weather. Seeing them fly was extraordinary- they just glide about, barely flapping their wings at all, and soar through the air. Definitely a sight to see. And hopefully good luck for the rest of the trip.

Albatross chicks.

Adult albatross.

More albatross.

Albatross mating cycle.

Otago peninsula- one view.

Went on an excursion up Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world. Would not have wanted to bike up (or down- that would definitely have been a test of my brakes!) it. Went with two Irish guys I met in the hostel. We were planning on driving their rental car up the street, but upon actually seeing it, we decided that their tiny car would be better off parked at the bottom. So we walked. Is this what San Francisco is like?

Baldwin Street- from the bottom.

Nice house on Baldwin street.

View from the top.

Went out onto the Otago Peninsula a second time to go to see these tiny yellow-eyed penguins. And nearly got mauled by sea lions on the way. There were a number of sea lions sitting on the beach, some asleep, some not, but when we tried to go around them some of the males lifted their heads and growled at us. So we took a hike into the sand dunes around the beach, and made it safely past the lions. The penguins were really cute- their nest was at the top of a really steep hill (Dunedin has a ton of hills), and they just hopped and shuffled their way to the top.

View of Sandfly bay- named because of the wind, so strong it makes the sand fly.

Nigel climbing the dunes.

Martin in dunes.

Scrambling up the hill.

A snack.

Gore to Bluff to Invercargill

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Wednesday was a day of victory- I made it to Bluff! 1800km of cycling from Auckland down to here. This is pretty much the southern-most city on the South Island (not the southern-most point, but the southern-most town). Had to go 30km back north to the larger city of Invercargill on Thursday to catch a bus for Friday, but other than that I am pretty much done cycling. Need to start heading back north for my plane back to Auckland, am planning on stopping in a couple of places along the way.

Bluff pole.

Maori creation legend.

Looking down on Bluff. Did a few walks in the area, which was pretty cool because there's a small micro-climate forest right outside of town. It's actually pretty typical of New Zealand because there'll be a town, with residents and a supermarket and the whole deal, and then only 2 or 3km outside of the town is a small forest to walk and hike around in.

Dreams? Maybe. Invercargill itself is a pretty low-key town. But two exciting things happened there. One was seeing the original- not the one built for the movie- Indian motorcycle Burt Munro modified and raced to set the land speed record. It was in a hardware store; apparently Munro sold the bike to the store's owners when he could no longer ride it. It was on display and everything, definitely a neat thing to see. The other exciting part of the town was running into Becky and Alex, the British cyclists, again. They rolled into town on Wednesday, had taken a different route through the South Island than me. We spent the night catching up.

Anyone seen the World's Fastest Indian? This is it.

Some of Munro's other bikes.

Becky's bike got a flat right before they left on Friday. Only 30km to go that day to, so it was pretty bad timing.

All hail the victors. 1800km of cycling!

Back to biking... Arrowtown to Lumsden to Gore

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Started heading south again on Wednesday. Caught a ride with some people I met at the hostel for the first 40km... weather was too cold in the morning to do the entire ride to Lumsden. Worked out really well though because a couple of backpackers at the hostel had been working there for a few weeks but were all leaving Monday too. It is a fair bit colder on the South Island than it was up north.

Old steam train... still runs on half-hour journeys. It passed me at some point during the day.

Name of train is the Kingston Flyer.

On Tuesday I took a small detour east to check out the town of Gore, famous for three things: a small airport which spends most of its time repairing vintage airplanes, a musuem that extensively details the region's moonshine involvement, and it is the brown trout fishing capital of New Zealand. The airport was really neat; the hangar where guys were working on restoring the aircraft was open and you could just walk around and look at all the airplanes they had. Apparently there was an airshow there a few weeks ago but I missed that. There were a number of planes that were being worked on when I was there- some were nothing more than a wooden frame and engine, others were just getting minor repair work done. One of the guys at the hostel I stayed at on Tuesday night was a pilot who had flown in to get his plane checked out for maintanence, so the airport does still do a pretty good business apparently.

Many of the first European immigrants to this region were of Scottish heritage, so when they came to the region they naturally brought some stills with them. Prohibition then started becoming a big deal in the mid to late 1800s so there were a couple close encounters with the law. The exhibits at the musuem made a big deal of pointing out how the police who came to confiscate the stills were often keen to taste the moonshine, just to be sure that what they were confiscating was truly illegal, of course.

4 days of juggling.

The juggling festival was a blast. Around 200 jugglers showed up altogether, probably about half were Kiwis, the rest from all over- Australia, Hawaii, Chile, France, you name it, they were there. The festival itself was in this little town of Piha, a little bit west of Auckland, renowned for its black beaches. The sand has a very high iron content resulting from long ago volcanic activity in the region; this causes the sand to have a blackish color.

Piha.

Piha beach.

As per what went on at the festival... it was pretty much just 96+ hours of straight juggling, performances, balancing on huge balls, more juggling, some fire juggling at night, tossing about diabolos (Chinese yo-yos), balancing objects on one's chin, trapeze swinging, and just general hooking up and meeting people. I learned a few new tricks- variations on passing clubs with other people, some new ball tricks, tips on juggling seven balls. Also got to try balancing on standing globes- the huge balls- which was a ton of fun. Most memorable people were: Deena from Hawaii, helped organize the International Juggling Association's festival at some point, part time biker, very well traveled; Collin from Auckland; Vanessa, a hula-hooper from New York; and Christian from Melborne, organizer of the Melbourne Juggling Convention, got a ton of tips from him, we also worked on some really strange and mind-boggling four-club-two-person passing patterns that I have very little chance of remembering how to do. I would say the best moments were trying out the standing globe, working on the dazzling four-club passing patterns, and meeting the ever-congenial Kiwis. Definitely a superb festival.

It misted slightly for about 5 minutes on the first day of the festival. When the rain stopped the sky was so clear you could see the entire length- both ends- of a brilliant rainbow in the sky.

And about two seconds later a second rainbow appeared. First time I have ever seen two rainbows side by side. Anyone else?

Bunch of people playing combat. Basically everyone juggles three clubs and then tries to beat each other up and make everyone else stop juggling. Rapidly degenerates into mass panic all around.

This guy did an amazing three basketball act with a 9+ foot unicycle at the big public show. Almost didn't fit under the tent roof while on top of the unicycle.

A circus from somewhere in NZ brought and set up their own trapeze/acrobatic playground.

Pauly (name probably spelled wrong, sorry!), one of the DJs at one of the shows. Awesome guy.

Balancing on a skateboard on top of a bowling ball.

Balancing a chair.

Guy making delicious pizza.

Deena and Collin.

This kid caught an eel. From the river next to the park where the festival was. Using a piece of meat as bait.

I got my hands on a copy of Juggle Magazine.

List of workshops.

Melbourne Juggling Convention anyone?

Handstand race. The guy with the black socks won.

Balancing on the standing globes.

Globe surfing.

Globe race. Not sure who won. I think it was the guy in white in the middle.

Multiple people on one globe.

Diabolo throwing competition. Aim was to get it as high as you could and still catch it.

Tiny (abnormally so) diabolo!!

Unicycle race/competition.

Club juggling competition.

5 ball competition. I didn't win.

Another diabolo competition. The aim was to get it into the bucket full of water on the top of the guy in the middle's head. His name was Mark. He ran the festival. Great guy. The girl who ended up landing a diabolo in the bucket was the one balancing the chair in a previous photo.

Juggling mess.

So.... I ended up hitching a ride back to the airport. Flight left at one the day the festival officially ended, and no one was going that early. So I had to hitch. Very safe,