Doing Dunedin

Day 96: New Zealand's Scottish City

After catching an early bus, I arrived in Dunedin at lunchtime, and as is so often the case, realised that the bus stop and the place I'd booked to stay were at opposite ends of the city. Although, being a New Zealand City, it only took twenty-five minutes to walk from one end to another, it was rather hilly and quite painful since I do seem to have accumulated more luggage (again). I found my hostel without too many problems and settled into my dorm which I'm sharing with four eighteen year old boys on a gap year (bless 'em, eighteen suddenley seems very young). They seem very polite and well-behaved anyway, so I'm not complaining.

The hostel is quite interesting, a labyrinth of interconnecting rooms in a building that's over a hundred years old and used to be a hospital (I only found out after I arrived, honestly). My dorm used to be the operating theatre and the television room was the morgue! I went for a walk around town in the afternoon and managed a bit of window shopping and a stop at one of the many fabulous cafes around town. With not too much to do in the immediate vicinity in terms of adventure sports or major hiking, Dunedin isn't really on the main backpacker circuit, but is a lovely place to visit nonetheless, with some good shops and old buildings (well, old for New Zealand). It's also got a really big student population and subsequently there are loads of cool cafes, including four or five serving exclusively vegetarian/vegan nosh. The music scene here seems pretty vibrant too, with posters and flyers for live music all over the place and lots of small music stores selling records and CDs. As if that wasn't enough, there's a chocolate factory and brewery here as well (I'm visiting both tomorrow). Needless to say, I like the place already.

As well as an amble round town, I spent quite some time sorting out my next little venture, the Otago Central Rail Trail, a 150km cycle trail that follows an old railway line. I'm planning on cycling the full distance, which should hopefully take three days passing through tunnels, over viaducts, across beautiful countryside, and stopping in little villages for food and drinks (and to stay the night). Without paying a company to sort it all out for me, organising it involved working out where to stay each night and booking beds, hiring a bike, getting a company to transport my luggage from one stop to the next, sorting out a bus back from the end of the trail, and booking a train to get to the start of the trail (which will involve three hours on the Taieri Gorge Railway, a journey which I'm told is rather lovely in itself). Anyways, I think I've got it all sorted. I should be leaving early on Sunday. Here's hoping for good weather!


Day 97: Chocolate and beer make Emma happy

I had a bit of a lie in today and after a light breakfast (I was saving myself), I walked down to the local Cadbury's Factory for a guided tour. Well worth fifteen dollars, the tour included a whole load of useless facts about chocolate, many of which I've managed to retain, such as annual consumption according to nationality (Britain 12kg per person: Sounds a lot, but that's only about four normal size bars a week. I reckon I have a bit more than that), and that the Cadburys, Frys and Rowntrees were all Quakers. We were taken round by Colleen, a rather enthusiastic older lady with white hair under a hairnet, all buried under a purple baseball cap, matching her purple oompah loompah style dungarees. It was quite surreal. The tour covered how different bars are made, introducing different parts of the factory which all smelt deliciously sweet and chocolatey, and provided ample free samples. I don't think I've been in a 'real' factory before, and felt a bit disheartened watching people doing the mundane tasks of packing chocolates, making boxes and removing substandard merchandise as part of the conveyor belt. It certainly doesn't look much fun, I hope they get free chocolate. (That said, I've just remembered, that my dad used to do nights at Cadbury's factory in Keynsham and he seems to have come out the other side ok). After the tour, we were taken to one of the three great big storage containers. Although the other two contained chocolate crumb, the final one housed a giant chocolate waterfall which splashed onlookers as a tonne of melted chocolate fell several metres into a container below. I think it's the first time I've managed to get chocolate on my feet!

Luckily I didn't have too much time to spend in the Cadbury's shop, and just stopped to ogle the huge variety of 250g bars they have over here - lots more than back home. I hastily bought a discounted chocolate fudge brownie bar (just like a standard Cadbury's bar, but each square is filled in fudge brownie filling), before rushing off, concerned about being late for my lunchtime appointment at Speights' brewery.

The tour of Speights was led by a rather spritely semi-retired gentleman, who obviously loved his beer and his job, as he showed us round the brewery. Starting with the history of beer making, we were then introduced to some of the older parts of the factory, including the three recently renovated gyles, big open-topped fermentation vats, which have been reintroduced as part of the brewing process. The tour itself lasted about an hour, but was naturally followed by tastings, and having descended down a spiral staircase through a gyle, we arrived at a mock pub and were allowed to sample six of their finest. Unsurprisingly I managed to try all six, my favourite being the 'Harvest', a great hopsy apricot brew that went down a little bit too easily!

By the time I got out of the brewery, it was tipping down with rain. Although this did serve the purpose of washing some of the chocolate off my feet (I was wearing flipflops), it did necessitate a trip home to change into some slightly more appropriate clothes. New Zealand really does have very wide temperature variations. It can be in the high twenties in the sunshine at one moment, and ten degrees lower and pouring with rain two hours later.

Kitted out with jeans, two jumpers, a waterproof and trainers, it was perfect art gallery/museum weather. Unfortunately, I think the ale and chocolate had gone to my head, since neither of these options occurred to me at the time, and instead I had the bright idea of walking in the torrential rain five kilometres out of the city to visit.....the world's steepest street.

One hour on, I was soaked, my bag was soaked, it was still raining, and I was standing in the middle of suburbia, albeit at the top of Baldwin Street, which turned out to be not disimilar to any other street in New Zealand (houses, cars etc). Although perhaps a little on the steep side, I've come across much steeper gradients over the last couple of weeks, so it wasn't too much of a challenge to walk up. I did come across a couple of Japanese tourists who were on their way down and assuming that I lived there, they started asking me if I ever got tired of walking up the street. By this time, I was feeling a bit like a (soggy) gullible tourist (I am, I know it), so I just agreed with them, that yes, it was a bit irksome, but I'd gotten used to it. To make my trek into the arse-end of nowhere seem worth it, I attempted a stop off at the botanical gardens on my way back into town. Although they were quite nice, it was raining so much that I couldn't really enjoy walking round and looking at pretty flowers, and so I headed back to the hostel, on the other side of town to dry off.


Day 98: Morning market and the Otago Peninsula

This morning saw me getting up bright and early to head down to the local MacDonalds. No, I haven't had a change of heart and finally succumbed to the joys of the egg McMuffin (or indeed any of the other mass-produced greasy items they serve), I actually just went there to make a couple of phone calls to the UK, since it turned out that the MacCyber MacCafe was the only place in town with a telephone for cheap international calls. Alongside phoning England, and sorting out my things and doing my laundry for yet another three day stint, I managed to get out to the morning Saturday market. With countless stalls selling all manner of foodie items, and veggie, vegan, organic and gluten-free ranges well-represented, it turned out to be well worth a visit. Although cloudy and therefore rather cold, it didn't rain, so I spent a happy hour going round trying various cheeses, before raiding the fruit stalls and stocking up on some healthy fodder for once.

This afternoon, I took the Otago shuttle bus out to Larnach Castle. Built largely by European craftsmen and only 140 years old, it's New Zealand's only castle. Although smaller and not quite as spectacular as some of England's offerings, it was quite pleasant to wander round and admire some of the artworks, marble fireplaces, and intricate wood carvings featuring in many of the rooms. From here, I caught a different bus heading out to the Royal Albatross Colony, the only one of it's kind close to a city, and therefore probably the only chance I'll ever get to see lots of the birds all together. After a short talk and DVD presentation explaining a little about the life cycle of the albatross, we went out to the viewing hides to watch the birds nesting and flying overhead. They're actually quite interesting, able to spend over a year out at sea (usually off the coast of South America), before returning to their nesting site. They can also fly (glide) at 120kmph and cover upto 1000km in a day, which I think is quite impressive. Since they pretty much always return to the place they were born to nest, mate and have chicks, the people working at the colony have got to know their flock pretty well. Despite binoculars, the ones nesting didn't look so special at a distance, but when they glided overhead past the viewing hides and you got to see the full span of their wings as they flew by at speed, they looked like completely different birds, and were suddenley quite impressive. As well as the albatrosses, there were also a load of seagulls and terns, and a big group of shags that waddled comically on rocks closer to the shore. We had half an hour of guided birdwatching, including viewing a 'chick cam', directed towards one of the nests with recently hatched birds, before heading back down to the shelter, where I caught the bus from to take me back to Dunedin.

By the time I got back to the hostel it was half-past eight, and having packed up my things and cooked some noodles, it was time for bed, with an early start in the morning (yes, another one).

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