#mount cargill

[naturalsceneries]

Mount Cargill, Dunedin, New Zealand

Source: shaunock (reddit)

[obiterdicta]

Mysterious Road-Trip

So, I just got back from a scenic tour of some of the really cool locations where I live. First, we went to see the glow worms which was a lot less awesome than it should have been. The council had cut away a lot of the trees so there was a ton more light pollution from the city getting in and disturbing the worms, meaning that they were a lot dimmer and didn't photograph very well. It was kind of thoughtless really, when something is clearly labelled as habitat to glow worms, and is a scenic attraction, to start cutting down a load of trees on the reserve. The hill to get to the worms was pretty steep too, which made for everyone clinging to each other in the hope of not falling down in the mud, especially on the way back down. And, because there were a lot of bushes- someone had to hide and try to scare everyone as they came down. Taken in the pitch dark on uneven rocks surrounded by glow worms :)(not that you can tell) Next stop was the top of Mount Cargill, the highest point in all of Dunedin. It was absolutely freezing but still worth the trip up. If I had a better camera, I'd have much better photos to put up of the view, but my camera sucks and the cold and wind made it way harder to get a steady shot of the city. The mountain is volcanic and about 680m above sea level so the views are pretty amazing.  image from Wikipedia of the view from the top of Mount Cargill As the person with the camera, I was also commissioned to take photos of everyone instead of try and get a decent shot of the city at night, so most of my pictures look like this:...and... and the occasional photo of blurry lights.  After that, we drove to the top of the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street. No one told the driver that only one person on the trip had walked to the top, so he didn't make us climb the hill, instead, we pushed the van to get to the top and took pictures as though we had climbed the hill. Due to lack of street lights, you can't really tell that it's so bloody steep, but we took another couple of group photo's there anywho. (At the end of this month, the annual Jaffa race down Baldwin street takes place...) The driver the took us on a tour of other residential colleges in the area, and we attempted to break into Knox, home to by far the most pretentious students just because of where they live. Meh, so they live in a castle like building. They live on a steep hill far away from the Uni too, but they have to walk, sucks to be them. But I digress. The college was being used for a function and so they had a bit of security lurking around, so we postponed sneaking in and wreaking havoc for another trip and got pictures as we fled the scene. Knox College, home to 380 pompous students. And then we headed to the waterfront, and looked for seals on the rocks, which we couldn't find. Someone suggested sending another student down to try and find them, but after hearing about how often they chase people, no one was really that keen the volunteer to be bait. The tide was way out, so there was no chance of getting any decent pictures, or amusing pictures of people getting splashed in the face by waves... moving swiftly on... We were just about to head home, and were pulling out of the carpark next to the waterfront when someone spotted a Dodge Charger. After a quick discussion, somehow we decided that, being as we were going the same way, that we should catch them at the lights and drag them down the street. In an old white van, of course we were going to win. This was going fine, and we managed to catch up with the Dodge, until it didn't go into the main town area where most of the lights were, but apparently that wasn't going to stop us. The 'let's race the Dodge' mission turned into 'lets follow him around'. Because this was always going to go well. First off, we were in a dodgy looking, rattling, white van. The driver was wearing sunglasses at night, and shotgun looked like he might mug you in a dark alley. And we were following a very nice car. And that car was brand new, and way faster than us. He was also aware that we were following him. We followed that car for about 15 minutes, and at one point we thought that we had lost him, because he led us down a road that was full of twists and corners and side streets. And it worked for a while, especially because he floored it. Until someone else recognised the distinctive back lights of the car in a clearing out of the side window, and so we continued to give chase. It was at about this point that everyone decided to put their seatbelts on, just in case we started being tailed by police. After another five minutes of tailing the car, he pulled off into a side street and we let him be, much to the disappointment of the passengers in our little van. After trying to convince the driver to tail another car, and failing, we came back home after a good three hour trip around Dunedin. Good way to start the weekend.