* Hello everyone! Between schoolwork
picking up, flying to new cities, adventurous road trips, and really bad wifi,
I have been awful at writing. I am very sorry!
Monday was the day Dunedin started to grow on me, after we got to
see a little more of it when we ventured out. With some help of uniformed
schoolchildren, we got off the bus at St. Clair’s beach. Almost our whole group was there. We walked
along the coast for a little and watched some surfers do their thing in the
perfect and stunningly turquoise water. Then we headed to Tunnel Beach. It was
over the mountain and through the woods a ways.
When we started out, I do not think we knew what we were getting
ourselves into. The HUGE hill we had to go up was a super beautiful, colorful
residential area. Every time we made a turn, we literally had to take the
steepest streets. It was hard work but still beautiful. Once we had made it up
the hill and it evened out a bit, it was a cute little farming small-town feel community.
I liked it up thereJ. After walking and
walking and walking and we finally reached the trailhead. It was a super long
and steep journey down to the beach, but absolutely stunning. The
greenish-tannish brush, the rock, the STUNNINGLY turquoise water, and the
overcast sky made for a perfect picture. I literally felt like I was in a
painting. I can barely describe it… Just
look at the pictures, it is definitely worth it. I think I may have liked it
even more than Cathedral Cove, which is saying a lot! And I think it’s just a
tad less heard of and not as popular which is surprising but also cool that
it’s not ruined by tons of people. We played on the rocks, hung off the cliffs,
took lots of pictures, but also just took it in, and then headed down a tunnel
through the rock down to the beach. The water was freezing, but the boys jumped
in anyways. Wow, this place was unreal. Just. Look. At. The. Pictures.
We found out that there is a bus that
takes you pretty close to the trailhead… Yeah. So we were determined to catch
it back. We got some ice cream at a little conveniece store, and made sure to
be at the bus stop. We cheered so loud when we saw that bus. Then we had the
bus ride of our lives hahaha! The bus driver was a HOOT. He was hilarious! And
quite the crazy driver down those crazy steep hills. Once everyone else was off
the bus, Amy stood up to take a snapchat and picture of us and he was like
dancing and cheering and then all the sudden he slammed on his brakes, and
pulled to the side of the road (not at a bus stop) in front of someone’s house,
stood up, took the camera from Amy, and took a picture of all of us! Hahahah!
It was hilarious. When we got off the bus, he stood up to give us all high
fives and cheers. Good ol’ Ken. Then we all headed to our favorite, Velvet
Burger for lots and lots of food.
Tuesday, a group of us headed to St Clair’s beach once again and I
tried surfing for the first time. Some of the people surfing did a story on the
guy that rented the stuff to us. He is
Italian, and his shop is just a bus/van with wetsuits and surfboards in it.
I’ll leave the rest to the video. Jason got some really sick footage with his
drone.
Anyways, Tuesday was supposed to be a
great day for surfing, so he even came out with us. He does some lessons as
well as rentals, but he didn’t instruct us at all. So the only instruction I
got was from my friend Madie, who had been once. Although it was fun, I wasn’t very good
hahaha! I did make it onto my knees a
few times and on my feet for a half a second then I completely ate it. But that was a fun day.
Wednesday was probably theee best day simple because we got soo much
free chocolate… We toured the Cadbury factory! At one point in the tour, we literally got
melted chocolate and our choice of toppings and ate it with a spoon. Also, we
got to see a gigantic chocolate waterfall in a silo. It is only for show, but
it was pretty neat. Honestly we were pretty bummed though because we did not
see any part of the actual factory area where they would have made the
chocolate… We just went from room to room tasting and watching videos and such.
We are suspicious about this… (Do they even really make the chocolate there?)
But, the gift shop was the best part. The chocolate bars are insanely
inexpensive compared to the grocery store so you can guarantee that I stocked
up.
Thursday was more of a work and relaxing day. In the morning we did
an interview for our final project. The person we interviewed was a girl in our
group, and it was a really emotional and heavy topic and interview. It kind of
took it out of me for the day. I will be doing the editing for this, which is a
big job so wish me luck.
Friday we got to go on a tour which included a long boat ride and got to see
wild penguins! They are called yellow-eyes penguins, and are the most shy and
endangered penguins in the world, so we were lucky to see some of them. We got
within a few feet away of them. Even the walk next to this beautiful untouched
beach was worth it. There were a bunch of seals on the beach and we got pretty
close to them as well. After this, we
went on a Wildlife Cruise. Man did we have some rough seas. There were too many
instances that we all thought we were going to tip over or a wave would crash
on top of our whole boat. It was scary! Most of us were seasick for about 2
days after this.
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