{"id":7755,"date":"2017-04-01T19:02:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T23:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=7755"},"modified":"2019-07-17T14:14:51","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T14:14:51","slug":"dunedin-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2017\/04\/01\/dunedin-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Dunedin and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent most of my time in and around Dunedin the last few weeks. \u00a0My 21st birthday was last weekend – a cause for celebration! \u00a0I went to a BYO at a Turkish restaurant and the food was wonderful (as was my $7 bottle of wine). \u00a0My lovely friend Ariana surprised me by baking me a birthday cake!<\/p>\n

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I had my first experience at the legendary Rob Roy Dairy, which regularly develops\u00a0long lines for their ice cream.<\/p>\n

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Definitely worth the wait!<\/p>\n

I hiked up Mount Cargill with a few friends. \u00a0Not a long or hard hike but it was very muddy from last night’s rain. \u00a0Thankfully I wore my trusty (and now muddy) hiking boots, so I just trudged straight through the mud. \u00a0Despite the overcast weather, there were still some pretty awesome views of Dunedin and the surrounding farmland from up there!<\/p>\n

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Had to pull over on the side of the road because we found a cow on the way home. \u00a0He was friendly enough to let us pet him.. highlight of my day.<\/p>\n

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I’ve spent a lot of time recently wandering Dunedin’s botanical gardens, affectionately known as “the botans.” \u00a0They’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.<\/p>\n

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The info center at the botans also provides free pouches of duck food! \u00a0The ducks swarm around you and will eat out of your hand – very exciting! \u00a0Here are some of my duck friends.<\/p>\n

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Also near Dunedin is St Kilda beach, where\u00a0I went with a group of friends last week. \u00a0We ate fish and chips on the beach and watched the sunset.<\/p>\n

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One of the coolest things I’ve done here was camp out in a cave on Long Beach. \u00a0In the cave, we found two baby blue penguins. \u00a0In the ocean, I found some glow worms, which are pretty crazy. \u00a0Glow worms are actually the larvae stage in the lifecycle of a winged insect. \u00a0They glow through bioluminescence, or a chemical reaction occurring from exposure to oxygen. \u00a0The light from their glow attracts insects, which get caught in the spiderweb-like lines that glowworms hang from cave roofs to catch prey.<\/p>\n

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We crawled all the way to the back of the cave and got covered in mud and dirt. \u00a0It 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. \u00a0On our way out, we encountered a fur seal on the beach – icing on the cake!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent most of my time in and around Dunedin the last few weeks. \u00a0My 21st birthday was last weekend – a cause for celebration! \u00a0I went to a BYO at a Turkish restaurant and the food was wonderful (as was my $7 bottle of wine). \u00a0My lovely friend Ariana surprised me by baking me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-otago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15368,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755\/revisions\/15368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}