Dunedin to Queenstown— 13 February 2001

Our last day in Dunedin. We woke earlier than normal to get in some sea kayaking in the morning. Neither of us had ever kayaked before, and the current was strong, but neither of us managed to get swept out to sea. I managed to see some fish and crustaceans swimming by the side of my kayak! It was fun and the kayaks are amazingly nimble in the water — I'd like to get some practice in and see if I can someday kayak river rapids. After taking the kayaks back to the house, Sue packed us a lovely lunch and saw us off at the station. (If you're considering a trip to New Zealand and are at all interested in its ecosystems, we highly recommend taking Sue's tours Naturework Otago. She's a lovely and knowledgeable guide. Jen: I cannot say enough good about Sue, her family, and her business. My only problem is that we learned and did so much, it is hard to remember everything!)

Our train today was the Taieri Gorge Railway, and we rode in an antiquated car through some beautiful views of rivers, mountains and, yes, gorges. In the parched, hot countryside, we transferred from the historic and antiquated train to a just plain old, broken-down bus. Though the bus had difficulty climbing grades above 5 degrees, we did enjoy the scenery (which very much resembled the American west, particularly eastern California and Nevada)(if eastern California and Nevada were populated with tens of thousands of sheep). After several hours on the bus, we pulled into Queenstown at 10pm, checked into Turner Lodge (a B&B) and hit the hay.