Dunedin--Edinburgh of the South

Here's my mood photo for the day.  The sun was coming up just as we were entering the mouth of the  Otago Harbor.  This is Taiaroa Head Lighthouse near the Royal Albatross and Yellow Eyed Penguin preserves.  

I'm inserting two maps to help visualize where we are. Our destination is Dunedin (doo-nEE-n), but the channel inland from Pt. Chalmers is too shallow and narrow for a ship our size, so we had to dock there.  The bus for our included "Scenic Otago Peninsula" tour came to our dock to pick us up, but we had to ride the shuttle to get back "home" after our wanderings in town.

We shared the little harbor at Pt. Chalmers with a container ship and another cruise ship that we followed in this morning.  It was the Radiance of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean ship under the flag of the Bahamas, holding 2,500 passengers and 859 crew.  

Scottish immigrants settled Dunedin (gaelic for Edinburgh) in 1848.  The gold rush of the 1860s helped Dunedin become the largest city in the country for a few years, now it's in 7th place.  However, it is still considered one of the four main cities of NZ for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons.  The city is built on 7 hills, the remnants of a volcanic crater, and has a land area slightly larger than Rhode Island.  It's known for having the steepest street in the world.  One of the first stops on our excursion was on Signal Hill which affords spectacular views of the city.

This picture is included in honor of Taylor Bivens, my son-in-law who is in dental school.  These are the Harbor Mouth Molars, "inspired by the University of Otago's dental school (the only dental school in NZ) and Otago Peninsula's volcanic origins, the sculptures combine ideas of painfully emerging teeth and new landforms thrust up by volcanoes."

Our driver took us along the Portobello Road toward the mouth of the Otago Peninsula, then turned back toward town by the "high road" along the ridge line.

The "low road" gave us views of this 15-mile-long harbor, including this rock right next to the road nicknamed, "the pineapple"

The ridge road took us past this little volcanic cone

and allowed us beautiful views of the open ocean on the south side of the peninsula,

as well as views of the harbor looking toward it's mouth.

Once in town we saw clear evidence of Scottish influence in architecture, from this monument to the founder of Otago, William Cargill.  (It's evocative of the much bigger monument to Robert Burns in Edinburgh.)

to the Railway station, built in 1906.

Inside, the booking hall is paved with 750,000 tiles.  

Our driver dropped us off in town near the "octagon"--an eight-sided plaza at the heart of the city.  I had determined months before we embarked on this trip that the souvenir I wanted to bring home from New Zealand was a green-stone hook, or hei-matau.  I saw one on our first day in New Zealand but let it get away.  Now, on our last day, I was on the hunt and finally found one that I liked.  

On our sail out, I was able to get a picture of this bird colony just below the lighthouse.  I don't have enough of a telephoto lens on my iPhone to be able to identify the birds, but it was fun to see them on the steep, bare rock.

As a book-end to the photos for our day in Dunedin, the lighthouse as seen on our way out of the harbor. Good-bye to New Zealand--you did not disappoint!  We were taken by the cleanliness and friendliness of this country that didn't really feel foreign.  The scenery was spectacular and the temperatures were pleasant, even in the middle of their summer.