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Hi y'all,
After a few rocking and rolling sea days we were happy to get on shore today. It's a working dock in Dunedin with a huge log shipping business. While not very pretty it sure smelled good like a pine forest.
We had breakfast and off the ship to take a boat tour ( I know! We got off a ship to get on a boat.) to see wildlife. It was a chilly morning and even more so out on the water. We saw 3 different varieties of albatross. They are so impressive with a 9 foot wingspan. We also saw fur seals and sea lions just lazing in the sun. Lots of other birds : shags, oystercatchers , spoonbills, gulls etc.
Chris : I really enjoyed the boat although it was really cold at times. There were eight, maybe ten people on the boat and that seemed to be a full load. We figured out that the cute young woman running the boat and doing commentary was the owner of the boat and business and she provided for herself , her eleven year old daughter and an assistant that usually stay on shore, solely with her boat. Her knowledge of the harbor and wildlife, and history etc was made all the more impressive by the fact that she could maneuver the hell out of that boat at the same time. It was fun watching her and she was a very impressive young woman.
During the tour we visited several different places in the harbor and it was just stunningly beautiful. And the boat captain was continually pointing out wildlife, birds, fish, sea lions, seals. Just amazing except, most of it I never saw. I'm that guy, I'm the one and there is always one asking , where ? What ? I can't see it. That's usually me and today was no different. We pulled up to ancient volcanic rocks jutting out into the amazingly blue and absolutely gorgeous waters where the sea lions and fur seals rest and sun after a long night of hunting and everybody on the boat is oohing and ahhing. I'm like, where ? What ? I can't see them. At first everyone is really patient with me, they want to be the one who leads me to see the whatever but usually I never do and they grow tired of trying to be, the one. I did eventually catch a fleeting glimpse of two fur seals after everyone else had seen fifty for the last thirty minutes. It was cool though, I just feel like it was more of a unique experience for me than the others. To me they are truly an elusive species, and you don't get to see that every day.
Rhonda; After the boat tour we walked into the the Laporte Chalmers where we docked. It was charming. We grabbed lunch at a little coffee shop but oh my it was good. I ordered a salmon bagel. It came with a big salad and tomatoes and cream cheese and capers with an amazing salad. It was enough for two and great.
We walked back to the the dock and got on our 2pm tour which was a bus tour of Dunedin. It was nice.. at little long. But we are glad we did it. We did blow off the 30 mins at the botanical garden.. not because we don't LOVE flowers but because it was 5pm and we needed a beer.
This is a local beer they had been taking about all day so we jumped at the chance to run across the street to a bar.
Love y'all.
bring me back a local beer!!