Day 9 was a relatively quiet day for Team Hubbard. I had a meeting at the University of Otago in downtown Dunedin. Julie had work to do, so the girls joined me on the trip downtown. I had a great conversation with a law professor while the girls poked around campus. It was raining steadily, so they couldn’t explore too much. They still got a good sense of the campus and reported to me that the students “mostly” looked just like US college students. They found the student center, which had some board games. The girls played scrabble and laughed at the poor Kiwi’s studying for their finals.

After our university excursion, we picked up Julie and headed off to lunch at the Best Cafe, a gritty restaurant in downtown Dunedin long-known for its seafood. It was, in fact, delicious, particularly the Bluff oysters, the mussels, and the blue code bites.

Over fed, we then spent some time in the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, which traces the histories of the Māori and European people in the region from the arrival of the Māori in Otago up to the present. It was so comprehensive that I was expecting the last exhibit to depict the Hubbards’ recent visit to New Zealand.

After the museum, we headed home through the rain to pack and prepare for the next day’s departure. Our time in the Dunedin area had been great.

We woke on Day 10 to still more rain. We packed up our stuff, piled in the car, and were soon on our way to our next home base in Queenstown. We had one more hiccup as we left Brighton. A road in the area was flooded, so we had to backtrack a bit to reach the highway. It was only a minor delay, as Google quickly rerouted us.

After an hour or so, the rain cleared up. Around lunchtime, we spied a green and yellow Department of Conservation sign on the side of the road, indicating that there was a national park of some sort, so we pulled over. After eating our sandwiches, we decided to take a short hike through the Flattop Hill Conservation Area.

It was a very different type of vegetation and terrain. The scrub alongside the trail was aromatic wild thyme. The rocks were worn into bizarre shapes.

It was a short hike but beautiful. Even the places we’ve never heard are amazing here.

And the wilderness goes on and on and on.

But it was time to be moving on. We wanted to get to Queenstown before dark. After another couple of hours, we reached our apartment, house number 4 on our trip.

The view from the living room was pretty incredible.

We went to bed excited for five full days in Queenstown!

-Will