Yummm... Beer and Chocolate

So, this part of my trip has been very yummy indeed. But first, the penguins!

So, I did go see the penguins in Oamaru (Ah-mah-roo), but I was very disappointed with the yellow eyed ones, because you had to look at them from way up on a hill, and they were so far away you could just barely tell they were penguins. I was pretty sad because I wanted to see them up close. So, I left there and went to try and find the little blue penguins, or fairy penguins. I went to the viewing area and found out you had to pay $20 to sit in bleachers up on the beach and watch them come out of the water to their nests. Well, I didn't want to sit with tons of other people to see THESE penguins far away too, so I decided to go find some myself. They nest all up and down the coast around there, so I figured I'd find some eventually.

I set off down the beach and found a place where there was a fence and a sign saying to respect the penguins, so I stopped there and waited, and sure enough, as it was getting dark I started to hear them honking out on the water, and you could see them bobbing there in groups. Then one by one or a few at a time they would ride the waves and try to come ashore. It was pretty adorable, because they'd get pushed up really far on the beach with a wave, and then the retreating water would pull on them and they'd fall over and get pulled back, but they'd get a bit further each wave. Then when they were far enough up the beach they'd start waddling really fast to try and get away from the waves. I also actually startled a bunch when I went to walk home, and came around a corner and there were like 20, about 5 feet away. But they ran under the fence and into the bushes pretty quick. I was able to crouch down and see them in their nests looking back at me, from only a few feet away. Quite the experience! They were so cute, I want one.



So even though I didn't really get to see the yellow eyed ones, I was very happy seeing the blue ones, which were the ones I really wanted to see in the first place.

Oamaru Botanic Gardens



After that, I left Oamaru and headed down further south to a city called Dunedin (Dun-ee-din). It was the first settlement by the Europeans, and it's name is Gaelic for Edinburgh, which is actually it's sister city. There's tons of beautiful buildings and churches, and the city is built on a harbour so there are tons of beautiful views of the ocean all around.



There was so much fun stuff to do in Dunedin! The best of all being the Speights Brewery tour, and the Cadbury Chocolate Factory tour! Hence the beer and chocolate title...

The brewery tour was pretty cool. I've found that I actually like this brand of beer, so I really did enjoy the tour. It's one of the last five gravity fed breweries in the world, which means the raw ingredients start at the top of the factory and work their way down to the bottom and come out as beer. It's also the last one in the world to still ferment it's brews in huge, 32,ooo litre fermenting barrels. The tour guide was really cool, and he told us a story about when the brewery needed to have a slogan so they had a contest back in 1980 for factory workers to submit their ideas. The winner was "Pride of the South" and the employee who thought of it got a cash reward, a special plate and... free beer for life. That lucky guy! He still works at the brewery today.

We got to see a lot of the factory, but the best part was the end of the tour where they took us to the brewery bar and we got to sample 6 of their beers. They basically gave us free reign of the taps for half an hour, so a group of 4 young people that I had met on the tour and I just kind of gave'er, and drank as much as we could. Hey, we had to get our money's worth! I actually liked 5 of the 6 beers too, just not the really dark one. They had a killer good apricot one that tasted almost like a juice rather than a beer. I pretty much had the equivalent of about 2-2.5 pints in 25 minutes, so I was feeling rather good when I left there! It was 5:30 in the evening by that time, so the five of us went to a pub to get dinner and have a few more drinks. It was a fun night!




The next day was my chocolate factory tour! Holy crap the chocolate factory was amazing. Just walking in to the factory area and the whole place smells like melting chocolate. It was like a dream come true. But they didn't let cameras in to the factory which sucks cause I can't show anyone any pictures, but it was totally cool. Pretty much how I imagined it would be. Like, assembly line chocolate making machines, and people hand painting the buttons onto chocolate easter bunnies, an chocolate waterfall... I loved it. The best part thought was the gift shop at the end where they had huge chocolate bars discounted for killer cheap. Like, $2 canadian for a cadbury bar that is almost 3 times the size of the ones we have at home, and so many crazy flavours that we don't have. I bought tons... We got loads of free samples during the tour too so I have chocolate bursting out of all points of my backpack at the moment. Awesome.



The gold stuff is millions of Crunchie bars....

Some other cool things I did in Dunein was going to the museum where they had a rainforest exhibit, and a huge 3 story room that was set up like a rainforest. There were litterally hundreds, if not over a thousand butterflies flitting all around. They were so pretty! Some were absolutely huge, others were a beautiful blue colour, and there were tons just sitting around all over the plants.





I also went to Larnach castle, which was built in the 1800's and is the only castle in New Zealand, and the whole southern hemisphere. It even had a turret, so of course I loved it! Very beautifully built on the top of a hill overlooking the whole harbour too. The tour guide new so much about the castle and the whole family history, so I learned a lot about it on my tour.




And since I was still disappointed about not getting to see the yellow eyed penguins, I went on an actual wildlife tour in Dunedin to make sure that I would get to see them this time. Well, I wasn't disappointed! When we walked down the path to get to the beach, there were two just standing right by the path, about 5 feet away! So I definitely got to see them up close this time. We also went to a few little bunkers where you could see them coming in off the beach and climbing up to their nests on the hills. Pretty neat. On the tour I also got to see New Zealand Hooker Sea Lions, fur seals, a baby elephant seal (Awwww) and even albatrosses. For those of you that don't know, albatrosses are the biggest sea birds there are, with an average wingspan of 3 meters. Holy crap are they ever huge. Just seeing them gliding in the air next to a teensy seagull! Because they are so huge, they actually can't fly on their own. They need at least an 8 knot wind, because all they can do is glide on the wind. So if there is no wind, they can't fly. Luckily it was a windy day for us, so we were able to see a bunch gliding overhead and a few coming in off the water to land in their nests. They only ever come ashore to breed, and Dunedin is the only place in the world where they nest on a mainland, so it's a pretty lucky experience to be able to see them. They can spend years at a time without ever touching land! Crazy.




Baby elephant seal


Finally, the last thing I did in Dunedin was to visit the steepest street in the world. Pretty cool, and it WAS pretty steep. It's supposed to have a 19% grade, which is pretty crazy considering most hills are like, 7-9% on the highways around home and stuff. While I was there, three cars tried to make it up the street, and only two made it. I climbed to the top, yay for me! The pictures don't really show how steep it was, but I tried my best.




So now I've left Dunedin and I'm in a city called Queenstown, which actually reminds me tons of Whistler. It's a ski town in the winter, but it's summer right now. But it's the same city pretty much, just without the pedestrian area Whistler has. The buildings are all the chalet style with rock and wood construction, and it's killer expensive too. So yeah, Whilstler #2. But it's really nice, and my hostel is right across the road from the lake, and my room even has a great view of the lake and mountains. I'm going to be here for a little bit, until I head down to Te Anau (Tee An-ow) for my 4 day hiking trip to Milford Sound. I'm pretty excited about that, but not looking forward to carrying my pack on my back for 20km a day. Ouch.

So yeah, killer huge update here, took me forever to write. I hope you like all the pictures, cause there's a lot there for you!

Have a good one everyone!
Miss you all!