Our campground in Oamaru adjoined the city botanical garden. Our tour guide last night said it was one of NZ’s best gardens, so we took a walk through it this morning. We were very glad we did, because it really is a special place. They have a wonderful area for children (note the SpongeBob and Humpty Dumpty photos), a section with exotic birds, a beautiful greenhouse, a Chinese garden, and many flowering plants, trees and fountains.

We drove through town to admire the beautiful buildings in daylight that we saw on last night’s tour. Then we visited a cheese factory where we observed cheese being made, and made some purchases which we enjoyed with our lunch on the road.

On the way to Dunedin we stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders. These spherical boulders look as if they may have washed up onto the shore, but actually they were formed in the mudstone of the cliffs above the shore and exposed as the cliffs eroded away. They are septarian concretions, formed when minerals crystalised around a nuclei, kind of like how pearls form.

Then we stopped at Shag Point, where they used to mine coal under the sea. Many fur seals enjoy this coastline, so we enjoyed watching them for awhile.

We arrived in Dunedin in late afternoon and set up camp. Dunedin was founded by Scottish settlers and the name is Celtic for Edinburgh. It has a statue of Robert Burns in the center of the city. Driving through the city was more hectic even than Christchurch; maybe it is because it is a university town. It is also built on a mountainside and the streets are very steep, requiring us to stop at stoplights on streets similar to those in San Francisco. It claims having the “steepest street in the world,” reportedly 38 degrees. The Gut Buster Race is held each Feb, and the winners race up and back in about 2 minutes.

We enjoyed the hot tub at the campground before fixing dinner in our camper.