I’ve spent most of my time in and around Dunedin the last few weeks. My 21st birthday was last weekend – a cause for celebration! I went to a BYO at a Turkish restaurant and the food was wonderful (as was my $7 bottle of wine). My lovely friend Ariana surprised me by baking me a birthday cake!
I had my first experience at the legendary Rob Roy Dairy, which regularly develops long lines for their ice cream.
Definitely worth the wait!
I hiked up Mount Cargill with a few friends. Not a long or hard hike but it was very muddy from last night’s rain. Thankfully I wore my trusty (and now muddy) hiking boots, so I just trudged straight through the mud. Despite the overcast weather, there were still some pretty awesome views of Dunedin and the surrounding farmland from up there!
Had to pull over on the side of the road because we found a cow on the way home. He was friendly enough to let us pet him.. highlight of my day.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently wandering Dunedin’s botanical gardens, affectionately known as “the botans.” They’re actually really large and diverse – you can spend hours wandering the premises, which include a greenhouse, a rose garden, an arboretum, a Mediterranean garden, a South African garden, an aviary with macaws and parrots, and more.
The info center at the botans also provides free pouches of duck food! The ducks swarm around you and will eat out of your hand – very exciting! Here are some of my duck friends.
Also near Dunedin is St Kilda beach, where I went with a group of friends last week. We ate fish and chips on the beach and watched the sunset.
One of the coolest things I’ve done here was camp out in a cave on Long Beach. In the cave, we found two baby blue penguins. In the ocean, I found some glow worms, which are pretty crazy. Glow worms are actually the larvae stage in the lifecycle of a winged insect. They glow through bioluminescence, or a chemical reaction occurring from exposure to oxygen. The light from their glow attracts insects, which get caught in the spiderweb-like lines that glowworms hang from cave roofs to catch prey.
We crawled all the way to the back of the cave and got covered in mud and dirt. It took a lot of soap and a long, hot shower to get clean again the next day, but it was definitely worth it for the awesome experiences. On our way out, we encountered a fur seal on the beach – icing on the cake!