Spending the night in a horse-racing track's car park was inspiring and we jumped straight back in the saddle for the mane road drive to Dunedin (I couldn't resist).

Before leaving we heard an ingenious snippet of information from a potentially overly friendly Spanish girl: 'You should just shower in swimming pools.' What a stroke of brilliance! Following her advice we went to the local swimming pool and used their showers for a meagre two dollars - bargain! However, this did come with the drawback of walking along the poolside where a swimming lesson was taking place and we absolutely looked homeless. It's surprising how much better you feel after a good shower and scrub down, I skipped out of those toilets. Of course, you're no doubt all wondering how my 'veeted' chest is doing, well thanks to my swanky new exfoliating glove it's look rather spectacular.

Refreshed and rejuvenated we clambered back into Jimi and parked on the outskirts of Dunedin (free parking see). Dunedin certainly has some striking architecture and the rumours of it resembling Scotland are true; it has a very Victorian feel to it with lots of stone masonry and pane glass windows. Interestingly, Dunedin is the old Gaelic word for Edinburgh and a Scottish influence is evident here - there are statues of Robert Burns and stately homes dotted all over the place.

At the sternum of Dunedin is 'The Octagon'. This is a circular area designated to a smattering of quirky restaurants and bars as well as St Paul's Cathedral and a public library. We have also realised that all libraries here provide free wifi so we camped out there for a luxurious half hour and caught up with news back home - my friend Ben has bought a new Sheltie puppy if anyone is interested.

With a second hand Jack Reacher book in my bag (from one of the hundreds of book stores in Dunedin) we set off on the relatively short journey to the Otago Peninsula where there is an albatross centre and lots of local wildlife.

On arrival at the Peninsula you are met with a sky full of seagulls which reminded me of that scene with the witch and her flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. Down on the sea front seals were escaping the chill of the water and lounging in the grass. We got right up close to them for a few pictures and there were two things that surprised me: most pressingly, the absolutely stunk and secondly their eyes are huge and a sort of lifeless black. Seeing them swim in the sea from a viewing platform made them look extremely graceful compared to their awkward lumbering on land.

Beating the harsh wind was a vast variety of wing sets but none unfortunately that were the impressive three metres span that I was hoping to see, it seemed that the illusive albatross was going to remain illusive. A guided tour would take you on a drive around the cliffs in the hope of spying one, but for a fee of 80 dollars we thought that we would just take our chances on the cliff top.

With a filling of nature and our faces stinging against the wind we decided to embark on highway 1 towards our next stop, Oamaru. We had no intention of reaching that destination by nightfall so had a leisurely drive where we stopped off at the Moeraki Boulders. These boulders are described as, 'A sight to behold' so we walked down the gravelled path to their beach at quite a pace, although when we got to the bottom we burst out laughing! They're bloody teeny and there's only about eight of them! Apparently, they have been formed over millions of years, layer by layer much like a pearl, until erosion of the sea cliff has lead to them falling down onto the beach. That sounded mildly interesting but believe me, they're just a bigger-than-average stone one a grey-ish beach.

Later on we arrived at our campsite and cooked pasta underneath a metal sort of hut with hail stones and lightening flashing all around it - it was all very exciting!

It's lovely how the sound of Chelsea sucking saliva out of her retainer lulls me off to sleep now.