Dunedin

We are capable of making new friends!! So, we headed to Richard and Karin's in Dunedin. They live near the "Steepest Street in the World*", Baldwin Street. Of course, when Karin got up Sunday morning and went to the gym, Martin HAD to go one better and run up ... yes, Baldwin Street. Twice.

Anyway, we digress...

It was great to have a few days hanging out with great people, their two dogs, and being in a home. Basically, we had our ideal weekend (the following might sound familiar to many of our friends...):
- Saturday afternoon, walk the dogs in the park
- return home. Drink beer. Eat curry. Chat. Stroke dogs while doing all that.
- Sunday morning - Martin and Karin go exercise, Kara and Richard read books, chat, do internet.
- Sunday lunch - fry up at local cafe
- Sunday afternoon - take dogs to practically deserted beautiful beach for 2 hours. Walk. Play with dogs. Find baby hedgehog on road.
- Sunday evening - repeat Saturday evening but with pasta instead of curry and play a board game (best board game ever. We'll be introducing it to the UK).
- Monday - those of us that work go to work. Those of us that don't lie in. Walk the dogs. Then... be impressed...
- Karin works at the local gym and pool, so we went along, and did a workout! Kara snuck off early though to get her barnet cut (£5 cut!! BARGAIN!! And not a bowl in sight!)
- Monday evening - drink beer, eat out (pizza). Beat Karin and Richard AGAIN at the boardgame they've introduced us to (much bitterness about ungrateful guests).
- Tuesday morning - same as Monday.

For those of you thinking we became the guests who don't leave, you're right. We're pretty sure when they said "Sod off you pommie b*st*rds" and "Are you still here?" that they were being silly...apparently threatening to shave people's dogs while they are at work is not a nice thing to do.
Finally, we had to leave to go meet Martin's parents. Hurray! Stanfords united!

We joined their coach tour for a train trip from Dunedin through the Taieri Gorge. Very cool trip. Lots of windy track and steep walls and ravines and viaducts to go over. Saw another example of Kiwi enterprise. We stop in the middle of nowhere to go see the view. And there, under a tree is a local woman, who goes up there every day to sell fudge to the passengers. Who doesn't want fudge after a long train journey?!

Really good to see Alison and Tony and we'll be catching up with them more this weekend in Christchurch. Although, bizzarely, we just stopped in Oamaru to drop off a hitchhiker and saw Martin's dad walking up the road...(great thing about being a Stanford is that our men can be spotted in virtually any crowd on the planet. Crap for covert warfare, very good for middle class holidays). So, we've just spent a bonus 15 minutes with them before their fun bus claimed them again (if we didn't mention this when David and Marguerite were with us, these guys run a tight schedule. We feel very slack by comparison. Especially as we still haven't decided yet where we're going today and it's 13.30 and we've already eaten cake. We're just going to drive til we make our minds up.)


Random stuff that was cool:
- pizza place we went to with Richard and Karin was the same place Martin's parents' hotel recommended...so we go to try the toppings we couldn't the day before. We now know the barman quite well.
- today's hitchhiker is about to start a PhD in NZ and it's relationship with the land. Really interesting conversation about the tensions between DOC (want to preserve it), tourism (want to give people access to it), Maori (generally, want to live off it), farmers (you figure that out!), and hunters....!!! It's a big issue in NZ. Chatting to her and Richard and Karin has been great for getting an insight into the country and not just bimbling around it as a tourist.
- bumping into Martin's parents (we know we've mentioned it but it was cool).
- it's stopped raining!
- the cake was nice...

Onwards!