So the winter comes.

The weather is turning fast and the looks are getting more quizzical as I continue to wear shorts on the -6C days. The old Alaska response is getting old, perhaps I can plead a neurological oddity? Rainy today, but generally beautiful even as the frost gets thicker in the mornings. I keep promising them a blizzard, we'll see if my luck holds.

This is a small big town, or perhaps it just the campus scene that is tight. An example: On Saturday I did my show on 91FM, then headed to the farmer's market. It was cool, but pleasant. My brain works best at an external temp around 5C so I was feeling pretty good. Stopping to buy some venison the vendor, done up in his down jacket and gloves, takes exception to my t-shirt and shorts. I tell him the Alaska trope and buy my salami. Went downtown to the annual J-day act of civil disobedience, then strolled the Botanicals and went home. Saturday night I arise to go catch a songwriter's showcase called Pages of Dunedin (very, very good) where I run into Doug and Edwina, University staff I have met. We meet some other friends of theirs after the show and head for a bar. While sitting there their friend Ran asks where I am from, I tell him Alaska. His eyebrows shoot up and he asks if I was buying venison at the farmer's market today. Hesitantly I agree that I was and ask how he knows. He states that when he went to buy some salami from the same guy they chatted about the weather and the vendor told him all about some crazy Alaskan in a t-shirt and shorts that had just slouched by. Then Ran bought me a drink. Feeling that this was just one of those weird things you run into I head for the bog. Coming out, a young long-hair stops me and asks if I was at Cannibal Bay several weeks ago, which in fact I was (picture below). He states that he and his friends were there and I had said hello as I walked past. Then he bought me a drink.

Clearly the locals need a bit more excitement in their lives. I can't remember the names of the people I have eaten with for two months now, and I get picked out of a crowded bar after saying hello on an isolated beach a month earlier? But I can't fault their generosity with alcohol. Actually, I can't fault the kiwis for much of anything. At least the non-Castle Street Kiwis.

I have skipped down to the Catlins over two weekends since I have been here. South of us, it is relatively undeveloped and people are scarce. The place is gorgeous, with some of the largest pieces of Native forest left in New Zealand and coastlines you wouldn't believe. Apparently this is what the Dunedin area used to look like as well, before they became infected with stinky monkeys.

Open up this picture. The pool in the middle has a group of juvenile seals playing inside. I watched these kids for half an hour from the trail.

Sea Lions don't wake gracefully. This is the aforementioned Cannibal Beach. I like naming places things like this. It makes development hard. "Seaside condos at Cannibal Beach" just doesn't roll off the tongue right.


Jack's blowhole, 200 m inland, a collapsed sea cave 155 m long and 55 m deep.

Sea caves are pretty common along the beach, lots of sandstone and limestone in the cliffs.

McLean Falls. Good name.

The winds here come straight from Antarctica. It shows.

The temperate rain forests here are incredible. Amazingly lush but with very little fauna. Quiet but for the birds.

Yet even here, like everywhere, you have to accept the reality of traffic.