Day 7 - Dunedin

The sun is shining, the air is crisp...great day for our bus tour of the local area. We are docked a few miles from Dunedin where the bus picked us up at the early hour of 8a. We stopped first at the lovely rail station (shown above), where inside were beautiful old mosaics and stained glass panels, all featuring train motifs. Very interesting. Next we were off to travel the hillsides, stop at the steepest street in the whole world, designed by some guy at a desk in England who had no bloody knowledge of the hilly topography here!. Then we were off to the obligatory local botanical garden, getting low on battery stength. There was a grocery store across the street, so we made a dash for batteries in plenty of time for the bus trip up another hillside for a view of the harbour where we are docked and then over to the other side of the sheep covered peninsular to see the sea on the other side. Lovely indeed...sheep, hillsides, ocean...we love it! Interesting architecture down here...lots of metal roofs on houses, even house with 'gingerbread' on them. We've seen that all over.

We opted to leave the bus when we arrived back in town and lucked into the public library with FREE browsing offered. WOOHOOO!!! It was fun stopping by and saying 'howdy' to some of my blogging friends...couldn't make the whole round or I'd be here awhile and I don't want to hog the puter! Dick is over surfing the web, too, so he is a happy camper. We've managed well with only one puter between us.

Most of the ports we’ve visited have been piled high with logs and/or wood chips, all intended to be loaded on freighters and shipped to far away places like China, Japan, and other ports where they’ll be made into cardboard, toothpicks, etc., then sent out everywhere in the new form. A big freighter is parked next to us (Albany Pioneer) today that had all four bay doors yawning open this morning, awaiting their load of wood chips. We are now back from our tour, and two bays are closed, and the conveyor is dumping chips into the next bay. The bulldozer is still over in the chip pile pushing and shaping the mounds to get the material over to the intake place where it is then placed on a conveyor and dumped into the bays. Fascinating process. Dick is lovin’ it.

Tomorrow is listed as a ''cruising day'' through the sounds...as opposed to a sea day, which the next two days will be. In other words, we won't be getting off the ship till we hit Melbourne! That's perfectly OK...I still have photos to work on and books to read...and maybe a nap to take. Life is good on the High Sea!