The Bottom Bus - to Dunedin

On Thursday 10th May, I caught the Bottom Bus and left Queenstown for a four day trip down along the south coast of the South Island. Our first day of travel took us through to Dunedin. On our way we stopped at a few places of interest but I wont bore you with those details at the moment. I have to keep something to tell you all about when I get home in a few weeks!! On arrival into Dunedin, we stopped at Baldwin Street - the World's Steepest St. At the steepest section it has a gradient of 1 in 1.266. In February the 'Gutbuster Race' is held here where the competitors have to run up and then back down this street. The current winner ran up and down in 1min 54secs - Murray I think this needs to be challenged, lets start saving for a trip back here one Feb!! We slowly walked up to the top of the street for some photos: We then went up to a lookout to see a view of Dunedin. It is so much bigger than I expected. I was expecting Dunedin to be the size of Queenstown and Queenstown to be the size of Dunedin!! The city boundaries of Dunedin have a 50km radius and only 1% of the area is inhabited, the rest is farmland - I don't think Dunedin has grown to the size they expected it to! We then went to see the oldest university in New Zealand. The building and the area outside it was stunning. I think this has to be about the main similarity between Dunedin and Edinburgh is the university, I didn't find Dunedin as being very Scottish! The students in Dunedin have quite a few traditions. The one that surprised me most was that on a nice day they take their furniture outside to sit on and to give them comfy seats for drinking. However, to save taking their stuff back up to their flats, they just burn it in the street and all chip in to buy new furniture the next day! We also went to have a look at the Dunedin Train Station as it is another old building. It was a lot nicer than Waverly Train Station but then again it isn't as big! We has the afternoon to do what we wanted in Dunedin. I went for a tour of Cadburys World. It was so much fun. I saw how the hollow Easter eggs and buttons were made amongst numerous other chocolate sweets. Then I got some free chocolates at the end! There are so many more flavours of Cadbury Chocolate over here. They even have a banoffee one especially for the Kiwis!

We had a quiet evening in the hostel watching tv and relaxing as we had an early start and long day the next day.