The drama began last Friday afternoon when I decided to go on a run before leaving on a big group camping trip to nearby Long Beach. A few minutes into my run, I passed a big black dog on the sidewalk. It was facing away from me, and when I passed it, it got startled and bit me! It didn’t hurt much, but it punctured the skin pretty bad, so after talking to the owner, I went down to the University Student Health center. They told me it needed to be treated, but they couldn’t do anything because they were about to close and there were no more appointments that day. They sent me down to an after-hours clinic called Urgent Doctors and Accident Centre, where I sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half and missed my ride to the beach. When I finally got seen, the doctor told me it was no big deal as long as I was up-to-date on my tetanus shots (apparently they don’t have rabies in NZ), and he bandaged the wound and prescribed antibiotics. All this time, I was scrambling to find another ride to the beach. I finally found someone–a friend of a friend of a friend.
Having finished that crisis, I made it to the beach and enjoyed an excellent evening of roasting hot dogs and s’mores over the campfire, hanging out on the beach, and sleeping in the huge cave that borders it. Here’s the cave, and the view from the beach:
I relaxed most of Saturday, but in the evening I went on a short hike with my friends Emily and Diana to Nichol’s Falls near Dunedin. The waterfall was beautiful but difficult to see once it got dark…
…but afterwards, we took a little side trail that led us to a hillside covered in glow-worms, which were pretty amazing (but impossible to photograph).
Sunday, I hiked Diana and another friend, Bob, up to Mt. Cargill–the tallest mountain in Dunedin’s immediate vicinity. There’s a radio tower up top, plus excellent views of the city…
…and the Otago Peninsula:
We found a large boulder near the top and sat on it for awhile, enjoying the sun and the spring warmth. Then we took another side trail to the Organ Pipes, a bizarre rock formation made of vertical hexagonal prisms stacked next to each other in such a way that they can be climbed easily. Here’s Bob scrambling up the rocks at the base of the pipes:
And here’s Bob looking over the edge at the top of the formation:
Here’s me sitting on top, with the sun just beginning to set:
We made it back down just as darkness fell, and reflected on our full and satisfying weekend.
Not a whole lot happened this week… the band played a few acoustic songs at a party at Phil’s brother’s flat on Tuesday instead of playing at Backstage, but we’ll resume the open mic night thing next week (when, hopefully, they’ll have a drum kit and a guitar amp again). Tomorrow I leave on a trip with the ski club to Temple Basin, a privately owned mountain in a fairly remote corner of the Southern Alps. Yes, it’s spring, but there’s still plenty of snow up there, and there will be no crowds. It’s gonna be a great trip–I’ll write about it next week.
