#932 Otago Peninsula, New Zealand

Can't believe this is only my second post about my beautiful home, New Zealand!

The Otago Peninsula will remain forever in my bones and soul. I have childhood memories of a crib (cottage) with stiff wooden kitchen drawers filled with someone else's cutlery, spartan 70's furniture, and a car load of groceries to ensure we wouldn't have to leave or starve. It was located on a freezing-cold windy stone beach at the end of a winding hilly track, surrounded by muddy green paddocks and the force of the southern Pacific on a blustery day. My brother and I played lots of cards!

There were other times, like when visiting Larnach Castle with my Nana, New Zealand's only castle, always a romantic historical place in my mind, but really only a big stately house high on a hill surrounded by trees, serving scones and tea. There was a tower, more of a stairwell really, but grand enough for untraveled me.

Otago harbor, like many kiwi harbors, originated when a massive volcano blew its top (and middle), and the hills are strewn with leftover rocks, which the stoic early farmers turned into quaint stone fences. Settled by hardy Scots who came from a similar climate, the region is rich with farmland, and framed by picturesque wild beaches and small towns. A view back to Dunedin on a sunny day is beautiful, and you can see where the dredges made a canal in the harbor. The small country road winds over the hills and there are no villages, only farmhouses, fields, and windbreaking hedges.

Map of Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula from http://www.visit-dunedin.co.nz/map.html