Dec 13, 2009 - Volendam, Holland America - Dunedin, NZ

Yahoo, today we docked in Dunedin and it’s SUNNY !!!! It’s finally nice…Peggy is still on her tour, so I headed into town this morning to see the city and just get off the ship for a while and walk… I was getting buggy after 3 days on the ship. It is Sunday, so not many things are open until about 10:30 or 11:00 am. Dunedin is called the Edinburgh of the south. It’s very Scottish here. The central district is a neat eight-sided Octagon designed in the mid-19th century. Towering above the historic buildings are the twin spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are many museums that focus on the Polynesian culture and history and an early settlers museum. The railway station was the most impressive. It’s massive structure was beautiful and colorful. Definitely the highlight of the whole town. About 11 I took the bus back to the boat to have lunch. The bus ride was about 20 min one way. I had to return because I had an excursion in the afternoon visiting another one of Dunedin’s well known sites. Our ship was docked in Port Chalmers and we headed out on our bus to the tip of the Otago Peninsula which was clear on the other side of the bay. Gee, if there was a ferry and we could have gone straight across it would have saved tons of time, but not being the case, we had to drive ALL the way around the whole inlet to the other side to the tip of the Peninsula. Here we met up with the keepers of the Otago Reserve. They gave us a lecture all about the world’s rarest penguin – Hoiho – the Yellow-eyed Penguin. Then we were taken out to see them, since they do NOT allow humans anywhere near the area, they built several “hides” to allow us an opportunity to view the penguins in their natural habitat. Since many had just had pup’s 4-6 weeks ago, they were busy guarding their pups and the other parent was out to see for food. An interesting note is these penguins will build their burrow (hole) over 800 meters from the beach front. There were sheep everywhere (so we had to watch where we stepped) and a few Fur Seals lying on the rocks of the beach. Naturally as we were out doing this, the weather turned crappy again, started to rain, and turned cold again. By the time we got back to the ship it was coming down. Peggy and her group finally go back to the ship right before we departed Dunedin.