Dunedin, Celtic for Edinburgh is NZ's South Islands second city after Christchurch. The city itself is pretty much like any other University City, lots of libraries, book shops and coffee shops. It is filled with lots of historic buildings, including Dunedin Railway station, a really nice building set in flower gardens - apparently the most photographed building in NZ. Other buildings included the gothic First Church, and the 130 year old stone buildings of the University of Otago. Dunedin was a really good place to get some jobs done and we were tempted by Cadbury's chocolate factory, but since the chocolate factory wasn't working we decided we would give it a miss. Chris has promised to take me in England instead. Our final stop in Dunedin was to visit Baldwin St, the steepest street in the world which was just incredible. It is listed in the Guinness World Records as the world's steepest street, with a gradient of 1 in 1.266. Here we read that they have an annual gut buster race up the hill - the record remains 2 minutes to get up and down the hill, crazy!!. We pulled up the camper right at the bottom of the hill debating whether to attempt going up it, however it looked insanely stupid due to its gradient and the no heavy vehicle sign put us off haha. We did however watch some cars going up and down it, hilarious listening to the engines running and working so hard. It was literally 45 degrees. We took a walk up it and couldn't believe the angle off the road compared to the houses on the street. It would be a quality hill for sledging on in the winter!! It was fascinating to visit it, well worth the trip just outside the city.

Dunedin sits on the doorstep of Otago Peninsular, our next stop for some more wildlife viewing. The scenic trip through the peninsular past lush green pastures, small bays and inlets, sandy beaches, rugged hills and volcanic land forms. Quite strange how it is so near to Dunedin city centre, yet so far from the pace of hectic city living. The peninsula is mostly renound for its eco-tourism areas with so much wildlife. Our first stop at the top of the peninsular was to spot some Royal Albatross at Taiaroa Heads, which can gain wingspans of up to 3 metres. You could pay to get a closer look at these amazing gigantic birds; however we watched them flying around the peninsula and then watched a DVD about them. We didn't get a close up but it was great to see the size of these birds. From a lookout we also spotted our first penguin, absolutely tiny, feeding and swimming in the bay next to Taiaroa Heads, quality! As it was getting late we wanted to go and spot some Penguins at Sandfly Bay as they usually come ashore 2 hours prior to dusk. We drove inland of the peninsula to the otherside, down seal point rd to the beach. The beach was so unspoilt and untouched and unlike many other beaches had huge sand dunes, which we had to climb down to get to the shoreline. As we were walking to the Penguin Hide, we were greeted on the beach by two huge, and I mean huge Sea Lions, we couldn't believe it. They were so lazy, chilling out on top of seaweed. They were that lazy that we could get so close and they wouldn't even batter an eye lid, except when Chris actually really did get to close for comfort, they probably thought he smelt. The big one got up, shook his fat belly and yawned/roared showing his whole mouth and dirty brown teeth, awesome to watch. Moving on we finally reached the (Yellow Eyed) Penguin hide, and we did see the penguins come ashore but we were too far away to get some decent pictures , however they waddled up the beach, did a few 360 degree spins, walked a couple more metres and then did the same all the way up the beach, they were so cute. We were really happy to have spotted them as they are only found throughout a few places in the world. Wrapping up Otago Peninsular we found some lovely view points of the peninsula and moved onto The Catlin's, an off the beaten track area with beautiful coastal sanctuary yielding forests, sand dunes and wind blasted promontories.