Adventures in Alex

March 3

Our plan to head for drier weather panned out. We made it to Alexandra, locally known as Alex, about mid-morning. Alexandra was named after the Danish princess. We walked around the small town with a population of about 5,000. We explored the museum, which contained loads of information about the gold dredging that the area was known for. We also got weighed by the old jockey scale at the museum, as demonstrated by Tina in the picture :)

The next day in Alex we decided to do a little more exploring. We walked to the shaky bridge and then walked some of the "rail trail", which is the old railway track. We again had Subway for lunch because it is cheap and a means to get our veggies :). One of my flip flops burst so I have one less pair of shoes to carry. Tina walked back to the hostel barefoot with me so I wouldn't stand out...although a surprising number of people in NZ walk around with no shoes!

After lunch we decided to walk to Black Ridge winery, about 5 kms outside the town. Black Ridge is the southernmost winery in the world (see picture). We tasted a number of different wines before heading back. We decided to take a more scenic trail along the river to get back. Along the trail, we took a wrong path and ended up walking in the oppposite direction for quite some time before we came to the realization that we should have been back after walkig for so long. We headed back in the right direction and, after walking about 25 kms that day, were ready to eat and relax! We decided on pizza at a local restaurant. I woke up a few hours after falling asleep and was so sick. It lasted all night. I'm so glad that we had the 6 bed room to ourselves that night! I was still sick the following day when we had to get ready to catch the bus to Dunedin. We made it to our bus stop time except the bus driver left Alex early without us! We got public bus tickets and had a beautiful drive to Dunedin :)

Erin (and Tina)