Dunedin

February 6
Dunedin

Dunedin is another town that is preceded by a smaller port city, and being less mountainous around the port area, I decided to opt for a more normal itinerary and took a bus into the main city. The town of Dunedin has a good deal of shopping, and from what I was able to see while walking around with Terry, that’s about it. We didn’t venture all that far and much of our time there was spent in an internet café.
Probably the single most eventful part of that day was that while I was walking through the streets, some insect, probably a bee, came out of no where and stung me on my right hand pinky finger! Two things make me mad about this situation: 1) I didn’t even see the bee when it stung me, and it’s sort of depressing not actually being able to see your aggressor, and 2) how is it I can travel through fields and forests and trails where no one goes with out a scratch, but can’t walk through a metropolitan area without getting attacked by some bee flying in stealth mode? Anyways, it hurt as expected, but luckily I’m not allergic to bees and I just hoped that the New Zealand bees wouldn’t pull out some unforeseen allergy.
We eventually left the city, my pinky finger slightly swollen, and headed back to the port city where I went to a grocery store for laundry detergent and returned to the ship.
That night was meant to be a night off while the pianist in the band played a jazz set upstairs. This was all going to go to plan till the pianists roommate was feeling ill, went to the doctor, and consequently got the pianist pulled into the medical center for questioning about the possibility of quarantining the room (which would be standard procedure for certain illnesses as we can’t allow the entire ship to get sick). Well, during the interrogation, the pianist wasn’t going to be on time to his gig, and as you might have well guessed, I ran upstairs to play the gig myself with the trombone player playing his horn with me. It was nice to get on a piano again like that, and after the first tune, the trombonist relaxed in the knowledge that this sax player actually does know how to play piano, and we had a nice hour long set which was well received by the guests listening to it.
Anyways, that’s about it for today and for this cruise as we start the trip back to Australia tomorrow. Seeya!