I woke up before my alarm, and managed to get packed, though since my bus to the airport was 20 past seven, I decided to forgo free breakfast in favour of getting to the bus stop on time. Despite this endeavour, and my getting to the bus stop at 19 minutes past 7, it appears the timetable had been updated, as the bus stop indicated that the next airport bus was another 12 minutes away.
It was skughtly later than the predicition, and ended up leaving the bus stop at 39 minutes past. This is the first time I've had to leave such a small amount of time between check in and boarding, even for EU flights or domestic flights in the UK I have had to check in 2 hours before e flight leaves, yet my ticket for this flight indicated that I had to check in 30 minutes before the scheduled departure.
We got to the airport drop off at 7.55am, giving me 5 minutes to check my bags in, and I managed to check in through one of the automated places. As I had a big bag, I went straight to oversize, but was advised just to load it on the normal route.
I took the bag back, and despite feeling that it was lighter than I had started, it turned out to be 20.5kg now and not 20.2kg - not much in it really, the extra could probably be explained by the food I was now carrying, and the extra pair of shoes!
During the security line I was getting more nervous due to how close to departure time it was getting, so I forgot to take my belt off, and therefore received the ubiquitous wand treatment. After they were satisfied that I wasn't going carrying lots of valuable metal on my person, I made it to the gate, and straight on to the plane.
That was quite pleasant in hindsight, despite the slightly higher amounts of stress getting there, not having to spend hours waiting for boarding after passing through security, and also not having to get up at a stupid time in the morning, are pretty big benefits!
The plane was fairly full, and I got to chatting with the passengers beside me, both of whom were from the south island, s we talked about the earthquake and my plans, ad took part in the in flight quiz that was being broadcast throughout the flight.
The safety video was brilliantly put together, instead of being just a boring 'exits here' etc, it was like a feature film trailer - I will try and look it up on YouTube to link it :-)
Once the plane landed, half of us stood waiting at the wrong baggage claim carousel, as none of them had any indication as to which one was for which flight, but when the bags appeared on the other one is was pretty obvious to all involved!
I established that the cheapest way apart from hitch hiking to Dunedin proper, was to get the shuttle bus, so I waited with a group of a few others for the next bus, which arrived after another 15 minutes or so.
Every one else had been already pre booked on to the bus, so had destinations already known, but as I am travelling with no plan, I hadn't even considered booking a bus!
The driver asked me where I wanted to be dropped off (it was a mini bus with door to door drop off, so very much worth the $25 I think), and he took a bit of convincing that actually, since I couldn't check in until 2pm, I wanted to be dropped off at the southern cemetery. Once that was established and completed, I heard other people commenting that we were at the cemetery, I guess it's not every day that a passenger asks for that drop off point!
I checked through the area where I had been dropped off, looking for the resting place of my great great great grandparents, though I soon realised that just aimlessly searching would prove to be fruitless, as there were thousands of sites to choose from. I did a quick search online and found a registry showing all the plots and who was buried where, and used that to establish that there were in fact 22,000 graves in this cemetary, and none of them seemed to be registered for the names and dates I was looking for. I did find a close match though, Jane instead of Janet, with the same surname, and same year of death, so decided that was probably the one that I was searching for.
After locating that site, and getting some photos of it, I messaged Mum, who over the next hour or so established that it wasn't the right site.
I walked in to the town center from there, and after checking on google maps for places to eat, decided none of them seemed appealing. I went past a curry house offering $6 lunches, but also felt that I wasn't really in the mood for a lunch of curry!
As I made my way towards the information center, I went past a cafe place that didn't appear to be boasting much about its presence, and looked to me to be very much like the Cool Gourmet place that a friend back in Scotland runs - family run business doing catering and cafe things - so I went in, and enjoyed a home made sausage roll, and a cheese and ham toasty, along with a much needed cup of tea. It was all delicious, and well priced. I also met a local there who had to go back to work, so I reassured him that I'd endeavour to keep his taxes low by spending as much of my tourist money as I could!
I went on to the information center, and after a long discussion with the staff there and much deliberation, booked on to the full day tour of the peninsula, with visit to the castle, albatross colony, penguins, and a boat tour. It was quite expensive, but I decided that I'm only likely to be here once, and it felt like it covered everything I would want to do on the peninsula, and fit it all in to one day, giving me another day to do anything city related.
After that was achieved, I went to the Count Down (a supermarket like store) and bought a few days worth of provisions. This may have been a mistake, as the walk to the hostel from there, carrying the 20kg bag, my full camera, and two bags full of groceries, was quite tiring. I have to admit my shoulders hurt quite a bit by the time I made it to the hostel, so after checking in, I decided to rest a bit and chat with my new room mates.
They were from Germany and France, and are in New Zealand for a year or so, touring around with a car, looking for jobs, and living on a much lower budget than I had set myself - maybe I'm doing this wrong - but admittedly, I don't have a car.
I made dinner of noodles, sausages and an egg, and then decided that I really ought to do something more with the day than just arriving and booking a tour for the following day.
On my way to and from the information center, I had noticed some street art, so I decided to go around the whole of Dunedin looking for more. Eventually I decided to look online in case someone had already mapped it - and they had, so I managed to get a map of locations. I spent the rest of the evening searching them out and admiring the work and photographing them for posterity.
By the time I got back to the hostel, I was worn out, and I knew I had to get up and be ready for the tour bus outside the hostel for 8.25am, so I completed the normal bed time ritual of wash, japanese reviews and sleep