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Day 45 - "Epic" New Zealand Adventure 2022

Travel 2022 Travels

Larry Farquhar

Saturday, 05 November 2022

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Building in Dunedin, New Zealand

St. Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin

A boys school.

When we arrived in Dunedin and got settled in, we took a walk around the city center for dinner. Along the walk, Connie took several photos of the unique architecture and monuments. We also visited the "steepest street" in the world, according to the Guiness Book of World Records. Baldwin Street is 529-feet-long top section climbs 155 feet vertically, an average gradient of 1:3.41. At its maximum, about 230 feet from the top, the slope of Baldwin Street is about 19° or 35% in 9.4 feet travelled horizontally, the elevation changes by 3.3 feet. The public isn't allowed to drive this road (unless you live there). The below photos don't do it justice.

Baldwin Street

Dunedin Prison, decommissioned in 2007

Dunedin Prison, built 1896

The next day was our booking for the Escape Room with "Escape Dunedin". We elected to go to their Dunedin Prison location. This old prison (jailhouse) was built in 1896, closed in 2007, and was opened as escape rooms in 2016. Some of the profits are going towards renovation of this historic jailhouse. The four of us had a great time escaping from handcuffs, separate jail cells, and then the jailhouse itself. We had to work together to accomplish this goal. It was challenging but got easier as we got used to working together. Of course, in retrospect, we made many of the challenges harder than they actually were. It took us about 52 minutes to escape. Not a record, but good for us! (Photos aren't allowed inside the escape rooms).

For the rest of our short time here, we took another scenic drive in the nearby countryside. The next day, we planned to take the "Southern Scenic" drive to Queenstown. However, this was going to be a 9+ hour drive. Instead, we elected to take a more direct route of only ~4 hours. Again, beautiful scenery along the way.

We arrived at our Queenstown hotel, the Copthorne, a couple days ago. The weather has mostly been great, but we have had a few days of clouds and rain. Our planned stay in Queenstown was the longest of our trip. We planned three days here, partly to allow a day to visit the nearby scenic Milford Sound. However, the weather prediction during our stay in Queenstown was not good. Tours to the Milford Sound from Queenstown were 13+ hours long. Although we would have drove ourselves, we decided not to chance it with the bad weather predicted. I don't know how the weather was at the Milford Sound, but it ended up being wonderful sunny days in Queenstown.

We toured the local area and town center. Again, enjoying some great meals and beautiful scenery. The town is built around an inlet called Queenstown Bay on Lake Wakatipu. Many scenes from the movies "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" were filmed in this area. Connie and I also celebrated our 44th anniversary here. This morning we took a lovely scenic drive to Glenorchy, a little town on Lake Wakatipu.

Tomorrow, we're heading off on a 6+ hour drive to the Franz Josef Glacier, located on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. We're only spending a couple nights, then it's our final drive back to Christchurch. Only 3 more days left in New Zealand, then we fly over to Honolulu, Hawaii for 10 days.