It looks as if we've come to another country, though to be honest, I've said this before on this trip. The palm type trees are nearly gone now, replaced by much more familiar looking trees, but on closer inspection the maple leaves are attached to birch trunks and branches!
We left Betty's Bach early enough to spend some time in Dunedin since really all we'd done there was to go to the Otago Museum, but when we got back to the city all of us wanted only to get back to that museum. We all knew that a new exhibit had opened called Cantebury Quakes and it was memorable. I think for me a big surprise on this trip has had to do with the quakes, the two in/around Christchurch as well as the two some of us felt in the last few days. these last two were confirmed by the exhibit which stated that there had been six tremors in the last 24 hours, 1200 since June. That, as well as the spewing volcano not too far away, gives me a rather unsettled feeling, but it is part of the culture here.
After a few hours in the museum we headed up to the green belt at the top of the city and had a picnic lunch with two women eating "real fish and chips"(out of newspaper) and a man snapping pictures remotely of Dunedin and the changing magnificent sky above. Then we began the drive to Queenstown through huge vineyards, increasingly hilly country and finally, The Remarkables, snow covered mountains that are as advertised.
