Hiking Dunedin

Shortly after I moved out of 229E Highgate, my friend Nikky came down to Dunedin to visit.  We decided to do a few hikes around Dunedin and one afternoon we packed a couple sandwiches and drove Hedwig up to Signal Hill.  There was a short hike there through some sheep and cow pastures.  Nikky had just watched Black Sheep, a kiwi horror cult classic about zombie sheep that kill people, and she was rather nervous walking through the sheep pastures.  Fortunately for me, it was easy to allay that fear since the sheep ran away from us as soon as they noticed us walking in their direction.  We stopped for lunch on a wee hill with a lovely view of the harbor and then walked back to the car since it started to rain: an easy hike for day 1. However, we decided to visit Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world, because Nikky hadn't been there yet.

me at the top of the world (kinda) - Nikky and I making friends with the local cat - a real sense of how steep baldwin is!

The next day we decided to up the ante and went for a hike up Mount Cargill.  After a drive up a questionable road, we finally found the entrance to Bethunes Gully, the starting point of our hike.  It reminded me a bit of the entrance to Pan's Labyrinth...however, despite my brief fear of meeting an over-sized talking faun, we parked and started hiking. 

It was early in the morning (for me anyway...like, 10am) so there wasn't anyone else on the path with us - which was great!  So we chatted the whole way up, and stopped at our leisure to take pictures.  I'm sure the actual hike doesn't take more than 2 hours, but it did for us because we like to take pictures... lots of them.  I found some pretty spectacular mushrooms at the beginning of the hike.  And the trees were really pretty and reminded me (as so much of New Zealand does, go figure) of the Lord of the Rings.

At the top we took photos of  the gorgeous view, and then had some lunch. Fortunately for us we took pictures first because the clouds literally enveloped us and all we could see was each other and the rocks and bushes we were sitting amongst.  I love that the clouds are SO close and stunning.

the views from the top - the cloud moving closer - and our view from within the cloud :)

the scree field

On our way back down, we decided to detour to the organ pipes.  It was a 30 minute side-trip to the neighboring hill and the whole time were walking under a canopy of trees and branches that curved over our heads as though landscaped that way.  When we got there, we were joined by several older hikers (some definitely over 70, I was thoroughly impressed) who had been there several years earlier.  Apparently there were more upright organ pipes but due to recent earthquakes and age in general, many of the pipes had fallen and created a scree field.  There were some that were still upright further up.  Nikky and I took a brief respite at the top of the scree field and then tried to get closer to the still standing organ pipes, but that just ended with some precariously balanced picture taking. :(  Stay tuned for pictures of the Milford Track - our next hiking adventure!

a close up organ pipe - the view - me - the upright organ pipes - Nikky!