Young perish and the old linger

Day 199

"I have to find the will to carry on
On with the -
On with the show -
The show must go on"

Topic describes how I feel now. All the people I have met so far in this trip have gone back to their respective homes, but I still linger here. I still have almost 4 months to go before heading back. As time goes by, social game becomes tougher and tougher. It's harder and harder to motivate yourself to show interest towards people's travel stories...because at this point you have heard them all. And as for me, I'm not nearly as eager to tell my stories for 1378th time. But...show must go on.

I did survive Shining hostel in Catlins without losing my mind. Place was so bizarre, it was in middle of nowhere in small country village(pop 200). I have no clue why anyone ever built such a big hospital into that place since closest big town, Dunedin, wasn't that far away(2h drive). Anyway, place was pretty cool with kickboards to drive around the complex :)

Catlins itself offered some nice scenery and wildlife. I don't know how numb I am getting, but I wasn't totally blown away by the scenery, it was just...ok.

Oh, and here is shot of Yellow-Eye Penguin. The most rare penguin in world. There are only 99 of them left at the moment so when this fella swam to shore it was quite a treat.

More interesting thing in Catlins was how nervous the sheeps there were :DD So far I haven't seen so spooked sheeps anywhere in New Zealand. I guess the remotness of Catlins makes farmers lonely and sheeps nervous :D

On 13th I arrived from remote farmlands to first real city for while, Dunedin, population 110 000. Place is modeled and streets are named based on Edinburgh in Scotland so no wonder Dunedin is said to be the most scotish town in New Zealand. City also boasts South Islands largest University which makes it big student town. Unfortunately(or fortunately) it's school holidays here atm so town is more or less ghost town cause all students are out in holiday destinations across country.

Dunedin itself is architecturally different than any other NZ town. It has lot of gothic look with its churches and european styled buildings. Here for example is church called "First Church"(because it was first church built in South Island).
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...and here is town's railway station.

...and here is high school for boys.

I spent total of 3 days here which I found was quite quite enough. There was surprisingly lot to see in town. One of the highlights was of course the Speights Brewery where I was finally able to taste New Zealand beer that has more alcohol than 4.0%! Yea, apparently NZ has had such bad history with alcohol that all NZ beers have only 4.0% alcohol in them. And that 4%-rule is not only thing. Everywhere I go they have big signs "24h Liquor free zone", "All public drinking of alcohol is forbidden", etc. and to top this, they have campaign commercials in TV every 5mins about "proper use of alcohol". Weird, cause so far I have seen nothing in NZ that would suggest alcohol problem, no news in papers about drunken brawls or husbands offloading their families after heavy drinking(like in Finland every week).

So now I'm still in Dunedin, waiting to catch a bus to Queenstown. My plan is take to little side trek across inland towards Christchurch and see(and hike) mountains again. My current plan is to be in Christchurch around 28th, Wellington 8th, Auckland 12th and...lets see where plane takes from there.

Ok...this is first time that I admit it, but after almost 7 months on the road mostly alone, traveling is starting to get tough. It's getting harder and harder to get excited about new things. Everything around is starting to feel more and more boring. I wouldn't say that I have homesickness just yet, but spark is definetly gone and I need to relight it again somehow. I think part of the reason might be New Zealand and how depressing this country(and it's weather) is turning out to be.

NZ is definetly not modern country. This country is in many ways 4-5 years behind current modern world. This country is also quite poor, people can't really afford to travel so they are stuck in their own little islands and need to spend their holidays always within borders of NZ.

Now, I still have nearly 4 months to go and I'm not going to quit before May. I know that if I quit, I will never forgive it to myself. I just need to find the spark again for just few more months. I figured that one of the problems has to be weather atm. It's nice and warm but it's not what it was the first 6 months. So in essence I have to get back to Australia and hopefully find my spark there again.