Year of the Rooster

Nothing much to report today, one of those moving on days with no spectacular scenery, no extreme weather and nothing of note to comment on. We drove from Cromwell to Dunedin through pleasant but unexceptional countryside, ending up in Dunedin around lunchtime. We can tell that tonight is not going to be a good one with regards to sleep - the hotel is on the main road through Dunedin, our window looks out over the police station, opposite the gate that opens and closes extremely noisily every time a police vehicle goes in or out. The room is tiny with narrow beds, complete with mattresses which could double as trampolines, so no great expectations of a good night.

We had a walk round Dunedin, but like many NZ towns there is only a small area of any interest (or age) and we didn't want to take the car out again to explore the surrounding countryside. Today being Chinese New Year there was a 'big' celebration going on in town. The local paper was predicting 10,000 people taking part, but we reckoned about 200 at the start of the Dragon Parade, which we went to see. Picture female Morris dancing without the movement and a long brightly coloured piece of paper being held up by a load of blokes in pyjamas and you more or less have it (plus all the participants were about our age). 

Given the very limited space and facilities in our room we decided to get a takeaway pizza, but the only place we could find was a bar doing them - Biggies Bar. Given we had to wait 15 minutes it seemed rude not to sample the local beer / wine, hence the picture below of C propping up the bar in 'Biggies'.

By the way it is apparently the worst summer in living memory for rain, wind and cold and we couldn't disagree - especially as the series of fronts crossing the South Island looks set to continue into next week. Random photos of today - if no post tomorrow it is because we arrived too late in Ashburton, will appear on Monday