Aussies and Kiwis

On Friday, we took our first excursion, which was a panorama tour of the city of Dunedin. On our way to Dunedin from the cruise ship, we passed some more coastal scenery. Our bus driver's name was Dave, and he was also our tour guide. Our weather was beautiful with lots of sunshine. Apparently the weather had been cool, overcast, and rainy the last few weeks. Dave told us that they've been waiting for weeks for weather like this. Dave Dunedin is the oldest city in New Zealand. It was named after the city of Dunedin in Scotland and is known as the Edinboro of the south. Dave told us that Dunedin means "near Edinboro". Dunedin is a university city and a lot of its population of 150,000 is comprised of students. There is lots of basalt here as the city is built on an old volcano, which fortunately for us, is no longer active. Dunedin had a gold rush back in the 1860s and became a wealthy city.  Typical Dunedin street scene Our first stop was at the Dunedin Railway Statio...

If you looked at yesterday's blog, I first mentioned that I couldn't post pictures. However, we found a way to download the pictures, so I went back and added the pictures to yesterday's post. I'm really glad we found a way to post the pictures, because today's sailing was so scenic, it would be a shame if I couldn't share any pics.  Thursday we finally reached land after sailing across the open ocean for two days. Our day consisted of viewing gorgeous scenery along the New Zealand west coast, and in three fiords, known as "sounds". The sounds/fiords of the southwest coast of the south island of New Zealand are part of Fiordlands National Park. This park is New Zealand's largest national park, and also its wettest, with an annual average rainfall of 225 inches. Fiordlands National Park contains 14 fiords and many lakes, valleys, and rugged granite mountain peaks with incredible land and seascapes. Many scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies were ...