A Boring Drive Through the Country...

Dunedin, New Zealand

May 19, 2007
S 45°52.447
E 170°30.195

After our drive yesterday to Milford Sound, the drive today was utterly boring. All we could see for miles were sheep, cows and cervena (the name for farm raised deer). Yes, we’ve seen a lot of this landscape while driving through New Zealand. However, there was usually something else that captured our attention like the ocean, mountains, or even a lake. Today it was just farmland.

We arrived in Dunedin after our 287 KM trek across the southern portion of the island, from the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Our first goal was to find a place to stay close to the city center, so the reliable Top 10 Holiday Park was not an option since it was 2.5 KM from the city. We opted for a place on the hill, checked in, grabbed our gear and started organizing our stuff in the room.

As I set my pack down in the room, I noticed a list of the rules taped on the wall. They were the generic rules, pretty much common etiquette. I scanned down them anyway, not really sure why since they are posted everywhere we stay:
1. Quiet time begins at 10:00 PM. Please turn down the volume after this time.
2. Check-out time is 10:00 AM, sharp!
3. Your Mom doesn’t live here; please clean up your own mess.
4. All ghost sittings must be reported to the management and logged in the journal.

"Oh shit," I said to Marc as I read the last rule aloud; obviously not a rule that I’ve seen in other places. I remembered reading in our Lonely Planet guide-book that one of the backpacker hostels used to be a hospital and reportedly had a resident ghost, but when we decided on this place I somehow missed that part. Marc immediately said we weren’t staying, even though we just paid for two nights. I told him to go tell the lady.

As some people know, Marc and I had a previous experience in a hotel that used to be hospital and souls, spirits, ghosts, or whatever you want to call the phenomena. If you haven’t heard about our experience in London then we’ll give you the full story next time we see you… Bottom line, we believe there are things we do not understand related to the "after-life" and we’re cool with that, but when looking for a good night’s sleep a hotel that used to hospital isn’t our cup-of-tea.

Marc very matter-of-factly explained our situation to the lady. "We really don’t like staying in old hospitals, we’ve had a previous experience… and I’m sorry, but we made a mistake when picking this place. I’m not sure if you’re a believer or not, but we are, and we really aren’t in the mood to see any ghosts tonight. We didn’t touch anything in the room. We just want our money back and we will be on our way." The lady smiled wryly, and simply said she completely understood.

After we re-packed the car, we quickly identified another place to stay. However, when we got there, they didn’t have any vacancies. We discovered it was graduation weekend and since Dunedin is a college town it was going to take some effort to find a place to call home for the night. We tried one more place in the city center area before feeling defeated and headed for our reliable Top 10 Holiday Park; can’t beat $30 USD per night.

The Dunedin Top 10 isn’t the best Top 10 we’ve stayed at, but at least it has clean bathrooms, hot showers, nice kitchens and best of all it’s ghost free…