on the road with Jed - day 3 / oamaru - dunedin

Oops - there seems to be a little spot broken at the windscreen and we do not know: Was it already there when we took over Jed? Did we get it while driving through some road works at SH1? But what worries us much more is the slight smell of gas in and around the car although the gas bottle is closed. So I send a little note and photo via e-mail and then we go on. It is sunday today and even in NZ workshops are closed on sundays. Just let's see what Wilderness will answer.

The road leads along the ocean, there are huuuuuge white waves, turquoise water, white sand and always a fresh breeze. What more could we ask for? Shag Point - Palmerston - Goodwood - Waikouati - Blueskin Bay - Waitati - again and again we drive along the sea and then into the heartland until we reach the Scots at Dunedin. First we take a wrong route, then we take a rest. We find a parking space in Cumberland Street, we have best weather, sun is shining - t-shirt-time! Some 100m march and we are at the "Octagon", apparently THAT spot in town. All around the square restaurants are settled [and the wonderful looking Royal Theatre], the locations are full to bursting, everyone enjoys the great weather and their 'flat white'. We take some takeaways, sit down at the park bench and watch people. And cars. And shops. And people. And cars - real cars: Chevys, some HotRods etc., maybe there is an oldtimer event nearby?

As in Christchurch you have big graffiti on the house walls here, I would rather call them paintings, even a ..? dragon/saurian..? Afterwards we roam a little through Dunedin's inner city, have a look at very steep streets [but not at THAT one and only steepest one in the world (?), Baldwin Street is some km the other way round] and old churches just from the outside and then briefly [umm, well...]  think about visiting the CHOCOLATE FACTORY Cadbury's [a MUST-SEE, according to our taxi-driver at Christchurch]. Yes, no, don't know. What's the price? We would receive a bag full of several chocolates as a present. But for the sum of the entrance fees we may buy chocolate on our own and even in our preferred flavour. I stay strong, we do not enter. Probably it would have destroyed my idea of  Willy Wonka's chocolate factory ;) Speaking of Wonka - there DOES exist this brand in NZ... freaky.

And yeah, a glance into the tourist's bag in front of me confirms it - oh really, who would like to have white crispy chocolate??

It is already too much city for us and we drive on, Portobello (!) Road towards the Royal Albatross Centre. Actually we should see 'tons' of albatross and penguins but it is the wrong time. Too early for penguins, wrong time for albatross. Anyway one is flying over our heads - the wingspread is respectable. Of course we could pay 45 dollars each for visiting the centre and certainly learn a lot about those birds but this is a) too expensive and

b) too crowded. As said before, it is sunday and even the Kiwis have a weekend and explore their country ;) Furthermore the weather is far too good to spend one's time inside of museums.

After half an hour of watching people, photographing algae, searching for penguins, spotting an albatros we go on and are looking for the chosen campsite, again this shall be a freesiter tonight. But apparently it is gone, probably because the whole street does not longer exist in the mapped way. The landscape has slipped, now this part is built up again but the ancient marginal strip is completely gone. Phwww. Thanks to RankersApp we promptly find an alternative nearby: Portobello [I have heard that name somewhere else?]. A campground with a lot of sites [each with its own dump-station, electricity- and water supply!], relatively low-priced. As ever the credit-card will not work, this is getting a little fretful now. Fortunately we have taken some cash reserves with us.

They have WLAN in this tourist park and we have an e-mail from Wilderness: Please go to the workshops tomorrow, Flavia has made two appointments at Dunedin for us [on a sunday!]. The wildernessers are not sure about the broken windscreen and, well, you don't mess with gas.