The past two weeks have been full of beach trips and a little sight-seeing around the town of Dunedin. The closest beaches are St. Claire and St. Kilda which are known for surfing, but the coolest beach we’ve been to is Tunnel Beach. The entrance to this beach is, as the name implies, a tunnel with a staircase through the cliff. You walk out of the tunnel and onto the sand of a beautiful beach with nice body surfing waves. Later in the week we left for a 2-day hiking trip in the West coast on the Copland Track which involves the two days of camping. This was the first time I was going to set out on an overnight hiking trip since arriving in New Zealand. We left on Friday morning and made a stop at the Blue Pools where we jumped off the bridge into beautiful freezing blue water. Later that night we camped at Lake Paringa so we could wake up early and get started on our hike. We hiked the 18km to the campsite where we relaxed in the natural hot pools and had a few drinks to ease our sore legs. During the hike, we would stop and refill our water bottles in the river of glacial run off. After the night by the hot pools we traveled the same path back to the parking lot. Unfortunately, the battery to our car had died and we were left stranded with the sand flies to eat us alive. Now I’m not a religious person by any means, but I did find it particularly funny when the only person to stop and jump our car ended up being a priest! He was on his way to his church when he stopped to take off his jacket and we were able to walk up to him just in time.
