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Published: February 7th 2009
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After leaving sunny Queenstown we soon found ourselves in rainy Dunedin, home of New Zealand's Cadburys World and the worlds steepest street....woooooooo I hear you say! We were equally as excited!
As we chugged along on the bus, admiring yet more mountains and picturesque views, the bus driver began to list the many activities to do in Dunedin (well all of two). No sooner had the word 'chocolate' been mentioned, had I signed both Ian and I up for the Cadburys World tour! I reminisced about my trip to Birmingham's very own Cadburys World back in the day and remembered all the free chocolate I had been given...I hoped this trip would be equally as good and instead of dinner in the evening we would be able to survive the day on free samples of chocolate! Unfortunately we had no such luck.
On arriving we found out that we would be going on a shortened tour as the factory was closed. I nearly cried! The tour was lead by two guys, one polish and the other a twelve year old boy (well maybe eighteen, but he looked twelve) who tried too hard to be funny...and subsequently wasn't at all.
It was torture! The best part of the tour was the chocolate mountain (where chocolate poured from a great height into a funnel), although I couldn't help thinking it was a huge waste of a tonne of chocolate and I could have made much better use of it! I also managed to offend the guide by asking why chocolate was twice as much here than at is at home and pointing out that that's obviously the reason why us European's eat twice as much as the Kiwi's...he did the maths and realised I was right...and he didn't like that!
We spent the remainder of our time in Dunedin with our newly found friend from Canada, Mal. We all had every intention of going to see the famous street but with the rain hammering down outside we found it hard to convince ourselves it was really worth spending $2 to go and see it and get drowned in the meantime! Instead we enjoyed a lovely dinner cooked once again by Ian Ramsey himself and then we played some pool in the pool hall below the hostel. A good evening was had by all!
Next day we were set off
to Lake Tekapo and thankfully the weather had brightened up! Ten minutes into the journey the driver announced that the bus would be making a stop at Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world...We both breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn't bothered to go the night before and quietly laughed at those who had bothered to go and were now moaning that it looked better in the sunlight! It took us a good ten minutes to reach the top of the street and when we finally got there we were both in need of a puff on my inhaler! We much preferred the walk back down!
As we neared Lake Tekapo we made a stop at the side of a lake where the battle scene from 'Lord of the Rings' had been filmed. We were allowed a quick paparazzi moment then we were back on the bus and next thing we knew we were pulling into Lakefront Lodge, our residence at Lake Tekapo. The Lake was beautiful - it was such an amazing colour (as you can see in the photographs) and our view of it from the hostel wasn't bad either! As we neared Lake
Tekapo we made a stop at the side of a lake where the battle scene from 'Lord of the Rings' had been filmed. We were allowed a quick paparazzi moment then we were back on the bus and next thing we knew we were pulling into Lakefront Lodge, our residence at Lake Tekapo. The Lake was beautiful - it was such an amazing colour (as you can see in the photographs) and our view of it from the hostel wasn't bad either! We spent our first night at the Lake enjoying a BBQ that had been prepared by our bus driver and the fact that we hadn't cooked the food ourselves made it taste even better! We sat on the decking outside our room for a while and chatted to other travelers but as the sun disappeared so did the lovely warm temperatures and it was soon freezing, so we had to abandon the lovely outdoors and head for the comfort and warmth of the TV room for the remainder of the night.
We woke the following morning to another beautiful day and after a good sleep we felt re-charged and ready for another adrenalin fix...so we set off
for a hike up Mount John which stood at the side of the Lake Tekapo. After climbing for about an hour we reached the top and once again the views were amazing, as we realised was becoming the usual in New Zealand! At the top of the mountain there was an observatory that a few fellow travelers had gone to the previous night to star gaze (whilst we had opted to save our money and just look up at the sky). Having arrived at the summit we began to appreciate how much better the view of the stars would be from up there and Ian suggested that we climb back up later that same day to star gaze...I kindly informed him that if he wanted to do that he would be doing it alone!
Next day was another early start and we were on the road again, this time heading back to Christchurch...
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