It figured out to be quite easy to find a lift from the Moeraki Boulders to Dunedin, this time a German couple from Stuttgart who were visiting New Zealand for three weeks. They drove us directly to the town centre and as hitchhiking worked so well this time, we were 3 hours too early for our appointment with Harry, our next HelpX host in Dunedin. He works, however, in an outdoor shop in the city centre, why we just showed up there and stored our luggage in order to wander a bit around the town. Until now Dunedin is definitely the nicest city in New Zealand, especially because its houses are built pretty nice in the surrounding hills.
Finally we also had the opportunity to show our camera to a specialist, but the answer was expectably not very good for us. Cleaning (yes cleaning NOT exchanging) the lens costs more than a new and even better camera. We directly asked him for an alternative camera, particularly one where we could reuse the batteries we already had, but of course the same camera is not available anymore and the newer model uses a slightly smaller battery.
Of course we expected something like that, but anyway we were not very happy when we returned to Harry (from the UK, 40y.o.) who by the time finished working and we were picked up by Harry’s wife Kim (original Kiwi) with their two children (Estella 2 years old and Reuben 3 months). After we arrived at our home for the next days, our mood directly improved. Both were super nice and lived in an old charming house directly in the hills. A grandiose location and really cute house and we should help out with some renovating work. At the beginning we actually thought they would renovate it in order to permanently live there with their kids, but far from that. They renovate in order to sell the house as good as possible in order to go on a bicycle trip around the world with the children in around 9 months. What an amazing idea 🙂
As the next day was meant to be rainy, we negotiated with them to do our work on that day. This time we had to sand the windows (Kerstin) and the door steps at the entry (Tobias). Not the funniest work ever, but as Australians and Kiwis say “it pays the bills” or in our case the accommodation. In the afternoon we were also able to look after our camera and drove to the city with Kim’s car in order to have a look in three different electronic stores. Harry even had a customer card to save up to 20% for one of them. There were not too many choices and we quickly figured out three potential candidates: a Samsung, a pretty good (and heavily discounted) Panasonic Lumix and the newer model of our old one (also a Lumix). As the better Lumix was just slightly more expensive than the “worse” one, we bought that one and we finally had a camera without four dust dots in every picture.
In the evening there was a big family dinner including us and the former HelpXer girl, who by the time worked and lived with Kim’s father. Additionally, there was another German family (including a one-year old child) who were picked up by our two hosts in a café some days ago. Apparently they didn’t know them before, they just saw them sitting in the café and recognized their bicycles and the baby trailer at the front door (they cycle around New Zealand). So they thought they could invite them to stay at their house for some days and get to know how the tour with the kid works out. It must have been a really funny situation for the Germans, as they told us that Harry and Kim just walked into the café and asked them “do you already know where you’re going to stay tonight?”. After they answered “We’re searching at the moment” they answered “if you want you can come to our house”. They even lent them their campervan for two days so they could visit the Otago Peninsula. Quite crazy if you think about it, but according to our experiences also quite typical for the kindness of Kiwis.
The next day, we had the pleasure to borrow the campervan as well and visited the Peninsula, too. It is accessible through two windy roads with some access roads to the sea with nice beaches which accommodate seals and sea lions. One of them is Sandfly Bay which is accessible via climbing down a sand dune only. As if that wouldn’t have been wicked enough we were welcomed by a sleeping seal once we reached the bottom. This was, however, not the highlight of the day already because the edge of the peninsula is the natural habitat of a colony of albatrosses. One may think that this is not really spectacular, but apparently it’s the last colony of this species on a mainland of the earth. All the others live on small unsettled islands in the south pacific. Of course the operators of the colony know that as well, why it’s quite expensive to see the Albatrosses in their nests (45$ for a 40 minute guided tour). Of course the Albatrosses don’t care about human borders why it’s possible to spot them flying around if the weather is all right. Even though we had not perfect weather (Albatrosses like to fly if there is strong wind, and we had cloudless sunshine without much wind) we were lucky and saw some Albatrosses flying quite close over our heads. On the way back home we also visited the Tunnel Beach a bizarre sand stone formation in the ocean which reminds a bit to the Great Ocean Road in Australia. After a short walking track one stands on something which looks like a bridge formed of sand stone. One can even climb to a small beach which is accessible through a tunnel in the sand stone. On our way back to the car we met the three Canadians of Oamaru, what a funny coincident.
In the morning, Tobi found a car in the internet which would possibly meet our requirements. A very old (1988) cheap Ford from a serious trader which had a current warranty of fitness and registration. That sounded almost too good to be true. Unfortunately it had some problems with the engine which stalled when staying too long why they asked us to come back the next day when they fixed it. Actually we wanted to head to Invercargill that they, but we thought let’s give this vehicle a chance. After we didn’t hear something back until lunch time, we called them again just to get told that they couldn’t fix it and gave the car to a wrecker…. Kim was so nice to drive us to another car sold by a private person, but that one figured out to be quite shitty and she dropped us off at the highway that we could hitchhike to Invercargill…