Die Gärten Dunedins

Wir haben keine Ahnung, warum Christchurch auch die Garden-City genannt wird. Sicherlich, auch dort gab es einen ganz netten botanischen Garten, aber der in Dunedin war größer und hat uns wesentlich besser gefallen. Hier nur ein kleiner Teil der zahlreichen Bilder...

Most of New Zealand's larger towns and cities have beautiful botanical gardens, but we were a bit surprised that Christchurch is also called the garden city although most other cities have more beautiful gardens then Christchurch itself. Dunedin is just one of many other cities with a splendid rose garden...

Im Rosengarten von Dunedin (my wife, surrounded by hundreds of roses):Sehr beliebt in neuseeländischen Gärten: Statuen von Fabelwesen- in diesem Falle Peter Pan mit Fee. (It seemed to us that people from fairy tales like Peter Pan are quite common in the gardens)

beeindruckende Kiefern (huge pine trees)
Jürgen in Photolaune (... lovely grasslands):
Im Afrikanischen Garten (blossoms from Africa and lots more could be seen in the botanical garden):

Taieri Gorge Railway

Da wir in Neuseeland noch nie Zug gefahren sind und die Taieri Gorge (die größte Schlucht Neuseelands) auch nur mit diesem Verkehrsmittel zu erreichen ist, haben wir uns spontan zu einem Zugtripp entschieden. Und die Aussicht war phantastisch!

We were always curious about how it is like to ride a train in New Zealand. So we took our first train ride in Dunedin with the Taieri Gorge Railway. It was quite a shaky ride and doesn't really compare to the European rail road system but of course this was a scenic ride and not a commuter train. Speaking of scenic, we really got to see an amazing gorge and it is even more amazing that someone came up with the idea to build a rail road track right through that gorge, but see for your self.

Am Bahnhof, kurz vor Abfahrt des Zuges (Carina hops on board)Im Zug (the train was quite comfortable and offered plenty of room to move around, just in case something interesting showed up on the other side of your window):
Es geht los...
Kurz hinter Dunedin (a famous race track for horses shortly behind Dunedin. We were told that some of the finest race horse do come from this are and some were even exported to Europe):
Schafe warten darauf geschoren zu werden (plenty of sheep waiting to get their wool off):
Die Brücken werden immer höher... (the bridges tended to climb ever higher)
ein kleiner Zwischenstop für Photos (a short brake gave us the opportunity for a shot in the wild)

und weiter gehts (the train was passing through many tunnels and crossed many bridges...)
Blick aus dem Fenster: beeindruckende Schluchten (well, all I can say is that grand landscapes cannot really be captured on film... the gorges were so deep...)

... noch höhere Brücken *g* (you did not dare to look down)
Achtung: Schwindelgefahr! (well I wonder who is maintaining the track on a regular basis. I certainly is quite old and creaky)
the scenery was fabulous...
von weitem sieht die Brücke ganz klein aus (you might get a rough idea how big the bridges were we went over):

this trip is absolutely highly recommended for everyone who is around Dunedin. Just wonderful!!!

Die Otago Peninsula

Direkt bei Dunedin ist auch eine sehr schöne und malerische Halbinsel- die Otago Peninsula.
Dort gibt es "lots of nature"- wie der Neuseeländer so schön sagt. Seht selber...

Auf dem Weg zum Larnach Castle- dem einzigen Schloss Neuseelands, erbaut von Herrn Larnach um 1871 um seine französische Frau zu beeindrucken. Da der Eintritt aber relativ teuer und das Wetter (wie ihr auf dem Bild seht) sehr neblig war, haben wir uns spontan gegen einen Besuch entschieden.

Today is peninsula day! We got into our car with hardly enough fuel to drive 100km but we wanted the challenge and started our tour. Our first point of interest was Larnach Castle, unfortunately we had to skip that due to bad weather as you can see down below. I guess we could have taken some very dark and foggy pictures of the castle but that wouldn't be worth the entrance fee. So we drove on to...
... und sind dafür lieber erst mal zum Albatross-Centre gefahren, wo wir viele interessante Dinge über die Vögel mit einer Flügelspannweite von locker 3 Metern erfahren haben.
(...the royal Albatross colony, which had been visited by Prince Charles some time ago. Well, it was still too early in the morning and non of the Albatross were flying around so we went into the information centre and read up on these majestic birds. Most of the Albatross species are endangered and rarely seen any more. So it's just this model with my beautiful wife ;-) )
Danach ging es weiter zum Allans Beach zum SeaLions schauen.
Der Unterschied zwischen Sea Lions und Fur Seals ist übrigens (neben Größe, Aussehen etc.), dass die Fur Seals auf Steinen zu finden sind, während sich die Sea Lions am Strand tummeln. ( We drove on to Allans Beach after the Royal Albatross colony. No clouds here as you can see. )

Möwen gibt es überall... (we were looking for some native animals, not exactly the one below but...)
Na, was habt ihr grade gelernt? Richtig: ein Sea Lion (... for this big fellow, a sea lion. We were lucky to see three of them.)
.. die auch mächtig Spaß miteinander hatten...
Dann ging es weiter die Sandymount Road entlang bis zum Parkplatz, wo wir unsere Wanderung starteten. (Since the weather was getting better by the hour, we drove along Sandymount Road up to the car park where we started hour little hiking tour. We couldn't really afford to drive to any other places because our fuel gauge was blinking whenever we climbed a hill. So we decided to take a walk to three lookouts and save us the drive, The Chasm...)
Los ging es über Schafweiden zum "The Chasm", einer beeindruckenden Schlucht, die leider auf kein Bild passte ;o) (... actually The Chasm was just too big for my camera so I didn't really took a picture of it and moved on to ...)
... und dann weiter zum "Lovers Leap" (Lovers Leap)
Blick von der Aussichtsplattform. Wenn man genau hinsieht, sieht man noch das Wasser unten in der Felsspalte... (it was going down behind the platform of Lovers Leap, quite big as well so I took six pictures and stitched them together...)
Auch Schafe genießen die Aussicht (sheep on their vacation doing a little hiking tour with us and enjoying the picturesque view ;-) ):
Dann ging die Tour weiter... (we were walking through dense bush...)
... zur Sandfly Bay wo wir noch mal Sea Lions und Gelbaugenpinguine sehen wollten. Auf dem Photo ist die BUcht schon zu erahnen... (to Sandfly Bay. The name wasn't too promising but we wanted to see some yellow eyed penguins and sea lions. Every once in a while Carina and me are doing things we didn't really read up on, so we started walking a "route" instead of a proper hiking track. The only way you know you are on the right route is when you see bright orange markers along the route. Well we followed the fence on the picture below and somehow made our way down to the beach...)
Der Wanderweg erwies sich als ein bisschen anstrengend (... I guess we started about 200m above sea level and walked downhill on sand dunes like you would find them in the Sahara)
Wenn man durch die Dünen wandert hat man hinterher tonnenweise Sand im Schuh ;o) (after about 30min of walking and plenty of sand in our shoes we almost reached the beach...)
... der Blick zurück. von dort oben sind wir runter gekrabbelt...
der Blick nach vorne: Fast da! (very impressive waves and happy to be at the beach)
Uns erwarteten sehr beeindruckende Wellen
und natürlich: Sea Lions, die ihren Spaß daran hatten uns beim Picknick zu stören. (well, that sea lion saw us munching our muesli bars and came so close that we gave way and settled for another place. Luckily there were enough other tourist he could play with showing of his swimming talents and of course posing for the camera ... )
und immer dichter kamen, so dass uns schon ganz mulmig zu mute wurde...
aber die Sea Lions hatten ganz offensichtlich ihren Spaß (mit uns) (unless you don't come too close to there resting place, these sea lions seem to be quite playful)
wir hatten auch Spaß mit uns ;o) (and therefore we enjoyed ourselves as well)

Und haben sogar wieder Gelbaugenpinguine gesehen, die grade den Berg hochkrabbelten auf dem Weg zu ihrem Nest. (some time around late afternoon one yellow eyed penguin made his way up this steep slope impressing us with his climbing abilities. Remember, these guys don't use their little wings to climb. They have a fairly good sense of balance)Dann hieß es auch irgendwann: auf den beschwerlichen Rückweg machen...
(... it was time to climb our hill back up again, not exactly testing our balance but our level of fitness. We certainly could have done better, but as we read on our way up "routes" are for highly experienced hikers only. So lets say we are kinda proud of ourselves that we took the chalenge...)
Die Sonne brannte und wir hatten teilweise das Gefühl, wir gehen durch die Wüste... (... to walk through the desert, just to show you these absolutely astonishing sandy pictures from the other side of the world.)
... hätten wir nicht immer einen schönen Ausblick zurück. Dünen hochkrabbeln ist aber ganz schön anstrengend- das weiß jeder, der es schon mal selber gemacht hat. (...we took it slowly because it really was quite exhausting. I guess Reinhold Messner the famous mountaineer should have crossed the desert instead of climbing boring rocky mountains. If you climb a sand dune, you at least walk it twice with all the retreating sand)
und kaum waren die Dünen vorbei ging es durch mannshohes Gebüsch (... and after we passed the sand dunes we ran thick bush. Do you see that little post on the left side, this thing showed us the way)
Hinterher haben wir dann auch die Wegbeschreibung gelesen:
Route: Rough surface with minimal vegetation clearance, few markers to indicate the way. Tracks will be steep for some distance. Suitable for experienced users. (für alle die Vokabelhilfe brauchen: www. dict.cc)
Na, gut dass wir den Text nicht vorher gelesen haben ;o)
Wir sind ja hart im nehmen -wenn wir müssen- und gut wieder bei unserem Autochen angekommen. *puh*

After a couple of hours we were lucky to be back at our car and even more lucky that our fuel lasted all the way to Dunedin, we even had 5L of fuel left in our tank.