Alan's Rambles: Dunedin: The weekend of the 3rd/4th Feburary

On the Saturday we went to the botanical gardens in the morning to see the Corpse Plant which wasn't quite blooming yet.
It was in the local news for finally being ready to bloom. Its a rare flower which I think is also the biggest flower in the world that flowers directly from its football sized bulb. Its also famous for being smelly. It doesn't flower every year, I think they said it flowers every 9 years or something. Anyway, it was on the news that it started flowering that afternoon. On the 4th we went back very early in the morning before the real crowd arrived, and we got to see and smell it without having to queue up for ages. On the news the queue got to over an hour long wait.

This weekend we did the same things twice, as on the 3rd in the afternoon we drove to Doctors Point Beach to find a cave that Sabine found online. The tide was coming in so we soon abandoned that. There was a strange photo shoot happening too at this cave. No idea what that was about but a lady was guarding a clothes line rack with all sorts of fancy things on it, including different shoes. After that we visited Orokonui Lagoon for a quick walk, but there wasn't much happening. just some Shell Ducks.

We re-did the whole thing again on the 4th at low tide (early afternoon), and was able to walk much further than the cave this time. As for the lagoon walk, there wasn't even ducks there this time. But we did have fun looking at the sand crabs. If you wait long enough, these little critters come out of their hiding places in the sand.

Forgot to mention, but on the Sunday morning after viewing the plant in bloom, we went to the ecosanctuary for a few hours where we ate a really tasty vegetable toasted sandwich at the cafe, and then finally we went to Doctors Point again.