Dunedin and Moeraki Boulders

We went to a place called Middlemarch on the South Island
and took the Taieri Gorge train to Dunedin.

We rode on old railroad cars for about 4 hours.  

This was gold mining country in the late 1800's.

We traveled over a lot of tressels and through 16 tunnels. 

I'm standing between cars which was really fun.  

The yellow flowers in the background are like weeds in New Zealand. 


The train came into the beautiful Dunedin Train Station.  It was opened in 1906. 

We then got into a taxi and when to see the beautiful St. Paul Cathedral built in 1919.

Baldwin Street is the steepest street in the world...even steeper than the ones in San Francisco.
Unfortunately it does not look that steep in this picture from the bottom.

It looks a lot steeper from the top looking down. 

Next we went North of Dunedin up the coast to see the Moeraki Boulders, seals, and Yellow Eyed Penguins.

The Moeraki boulders are some of the strangest things we have seen.  They are huge spherial stones that are scattered over the sandy beach.  These boulders are septarian concretions, and were formed in ancient sea floor sediments.

They were created by a process similar to the formation of oyster pearls, where layers of material cover a central nucleus or core. For the oyster, this core is an irritating grain of sand.

For the boulders, it was a fossil shell, bone fragment, or piece of wood. Lime minerals in the sea accumulated on the core over time, and the concretion grew into perfectly spherical shapes up to 10 feet in diameter.

The sea floor was then lifted up and then through erosion the boulders are exposed on the side of the hill.

We then went on a hike to see some seals.

Very lazy.

We got very close to them.
The end of the trip we hiked up to this beautiful lighthouse.