I thought this was pretty cool so let's go for a drive up and down the world's
steepest residential street, Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand. So where
is Dunedin? New Zealand is made up of two islands: north and south. Dunedin is
towards the southern end of the South Island and as we zoom in you'll see
Baldwin Street right there and we'll go up for a drive in just a minute but
there's more to do in Dunedin than just drive up and down the street.
For example Speights beer is on tap all over New Zealand and you can go and take
a tour of their brewery there or have dinner at the alehouse. I had the lamb,
it was delicious. You can go to the Olveston House. We checked in on swarm. I got
14 points! First of my friends. You get a kind of an Upstairs/Downstairs/Downton Abbey
tour of the place, was really cool. Found these flowers out back which I've never
seen before so, picture. Then we went and saw sea lions at nearby Sandfly Beach. We
didn't just see 'em, we got CHASED by sea lions.
They're much bigger than you think they are and they're much more agile on the
land than you think they'd be. Okay and then, this is one of the coolest things I
saw in the entire two weeks we were there. We knew there MIGHT be penguins on
Sandfly Beach but we weren't sure if we would see one, and then this little guy
popped up out of the surf! A penguin! Okay, but here's what we're doing here. We are
driving up and down Baldwin Street. You can see right there the asphalt kind of
changes, the road surface changes from asphaltic to concrete, and according to
Wikipedia that's because the hill is so steep that if they paved it in asphalt
on warm days the asphalt would simply just flow down the street. So they had to
do it in concrete so everything would stay in place. That's how steep it is.
Lots of people walking all the way up the street maybe it's a little bit of a
challenge to themselves. That's why yours truly walked all the way up the hill.
That's me on the left there, kind of lumbering of the side of the hill. I only
gained five pounds during our two-week trip in New Zealand and I have Baldwin
Street, I'm sure, in part, to thank for that. That was some serious cardio.
Alright then we're gonna back up. Now if you go here, I don't know if I'd
recommend driving up like we did because up at the top it's quite awkward. It's
not very easy to turn around, there's a lot of people up there. So, you know, maybe
take the hike instead of the drive. But we wanted to shoot this video so...
Coming up here, look how steep! You can see right there that little lip, you
can't even see over it! Yeah that's how steep. You see this grey house
on the right? That's me with the camera sat on the street level so the street
appears to be level. That's how far I had to lean into the grade. It's a thirty
five percent grade at that point. And then as you continue down, you can see how
beautiful the surrounding landscape is. The city of Dunedin is incredible but
it's definitely a HILLY city. Be prepared to do some hiking. Now coming
up here on the right again we'll see some hedges with a railing. We took a
picture of the failure of Martin trying to stay level with the the grade of the
street that's him leaning into it so that's about halfway down and still that
steep so definitely a really steep hill. I guess the reason it's it is so steep is
because the the city was laid out in a grid by a guy in London who hadn't
necessarily seen it. And when they saw the plans they saw that there was a street there so
they went ahead and put a street there. Now you've got the world's steepest
residential street. With all kinds of tourists, taking pictures. So thanks to my
friend Pedram Javaheri who suggested we check out Baldwin Street.
He had read about it and looked it up real fast when he found out I was going to New
Zealand. Showed me pictures, so we made sure to seek it out while we were there
and it was definitely worth it. Very cool, very unique experience. Baldwin Street
in Dunedin, New Zealand.