The Great Adventure, continued.

April 15th:

In the morning the Swiss guy decided to teach us (Ben, Peter the Englishman, and myself) how to juggle. Surprisingly, I picked up on it quicker than I though I would, but, sadly, I still find myself not entirely confident in my abilities. In other words, I can juggle 3 balls 3 times. Not very impressive. As we left the nice Swiss-Kiwi hostel, Ben gave his number to one of the girls that we met the previous night, thereby getting his hopes up and denying himself the ability to actually call them by getting their numbers. Sadly, they never did call us back.

It was no time for sadness, however, because we were finally getting out of the bush back into a real city! We drove from Balclutha to Dunedin that day, and we found ourselves surrounded by a strange, foreign animal - people. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, we found ourselves there on a Sunday, so the town was effectively closed down. Which was fine with me, it left the isite, and backpacker hostels in the city, effectively free. So we got them to book us a place at a backpackers, we retrieved our keys from the cashier, and headed off to explore the Otago peninsula.

Our first stop on the peninsula was at Larnach Castle. It's the only castle in New Zealand, and apparently it was built by a Scotsman who decided that he was bitter that his family had never had a castle in the past, so he was gonna damn well make one in New Zealand. Anyways, it wasn't the largest or most impressive of castles, but it does have the distinction of being the Only Castle in New Zealand.


A view of the castle.




Ben, living the life of a King.



Ben, living the life of a queen.


A view of Otago Peninsula from the castle. What it lacked in tremendous size, it made up for in tremendous views.

During our perusal of the Castle gardens, we took a sharp right turn, looked into the darkness of what looked like a prison cell, and saw this. I don't have a clue what it is. All I know is that it was scary as hell.

We then proceeded on our merry way to the tip of the Peninsula, where there is the only land-based nesting area for the Royal Albatross in the world. Unfortunately, it wasn't open to the public, and to get in you had to pay to get on a tour. For Albatrosses. I can rent the Rescuers whenever I want to see an Albatross, by gum. And we were about to go and pay for a tour of a yellow-eyed penguin colony. Yes, that's right, penguins.

As Ben was inside booking our tickets for the tour, I stayed outside and pet the dog on the porch. It was obviously a little attention whore much like my own, and laid on its side the minute I started to touch its belly. When the dog was laying on the ground, prone, Ben called me inside to check out the price of the tour. But, instead of being focused on the tour, I decided to tell the lady working at the desk that I had "killed her dog." She gave me this sad, scared face, and I decided to add to my previous statement that I had pet the dog until he "looked dead." I'm afraid that if I didn't add that, she was going to have some sort of a heart attack. Anyways, the penguin tour.

We got in the penguin tour buses and rode to the penguin reserve. But before we actually got to see any penguins, they took us to a spot where fur seals were know to stay. And, that day, they were indeed in residence. My favorite part is how the sheep would walk right up to the seal, flash a west sah-ide and walk away. Awesome. So then we walked down to the penguin reserve. We saw a couple of 'em come in from the distance, and then our guide took us into the trenches:


No joke. They dug penguin trenches so we could get closer to the penguins. And we got closer. A lot closer. I got so close that I could have reached out and kissed this one, the little guy named Shrek:


Note the really creepy yellow pupil. Apparently the newborn penguins develop this at six months in order to look like a gangster and scare away early predators. At least, that's what Ben and I think. These little guys live completely solitary lives, closed off from any other penguin (excepting their mate) for the duration of their lives. And, with eyes like that, I know why. Then Ben and I asked around and found a beach, where, after dark, the little blue penguins are known to come in from sea en masse and roost. We said, "sure. Let's do it. We're in." So we drove back to the tip of the peninsula to pilot's beach, home of the adorable little blue penguins. To pass the time, Ben and I talked. We're rather good at that. We talked about Heaven and Hell and Harry Potter until another American girl told us to shut up, the penguins were coming. Of course, sometime during the conversation it got dark, so we couldn't really get a good view of the penguins. They were but shadows within shadows, ephemeral spectres of the night that we could only hear: purrrrr, yelp, cackle. Really, these things made the weirdest noises. I wish I could replicate 'em, but it was somewhere between a birdcall, a cat's purr, and a dog's growl, ending with a puppy's yelp of pain. Luckily, one of the volunteers who was there to make sure that we didn't take flash photos and blind the little buggers had brought along a red light, so we actually got a front-row seat as the adorable creatures waddled up the beach in little gangs, made their noises, and kicked rabbits out of their holes so the penguins could sleep for the night. It was like seeing a bunch of little, adorable mobsters clean house.

We then returned to Dunedin for the night, Ben played footsies with a cute girl on the bunk opposite him, and we went to bed.

April 16:
Today I make all of the female readers of this blog jealous. I began this day in Cadbury World. The home of nearly all the chocolate in New Zealand. Since Ben and I hadn't really shaved in about 3 days, the lady leading the tour required us to wear snoots. Bah.


One of the biggest draws of the tour is a 5 story chocolate waterfall. Oh yeah, 5 stories. We had a waterfall of Willy Wonka proportions imagined, and with a tag like that, wouldn't you? The reality is that they have a 1 story chocolate faucet placed 5 stories in the air. The lady turned it on, the chocolate poured out of the faucet for 15 seconds, and we continued on with the tour. Nonetheless, I found the coolest present for ma mum in there, provided she can keep it away from the dog.

They had a few of these scattered about the factory, each more terrible than the last. They depicted scenes of animal torture on a grand scale. For example, if you care to look at this picture, you'll note that the happy, smiling gnome guys are joyously drowning a mouse in chocolate. Hardly after dinner fare.

From there we went on the Speights brewery tour. This tour was far more tongue in cheek and waay more entertaining than the Cadbury tour. And, at the end of it, they had a TV playing all of the Speights "Southern Man" commercials contiguously. They're pretty awesome, if you love youtube, check 'em out. Oh, yeah, and they had a little island in the middle of the room from which you could pour out as much beer as you liked while the commercials were running. I sat back, pulled up a cold lemonade, and giggled continuously at the commercials.

"Good on ya, Mate."

From the Speights tour we ate at the worst labeled Japanese sushi restaurant ever:

But, horrible appellation aside, they had the best wasabi that I've ever tried. The stuff that we get in Reno is amazingly weak compared with this stuff. I put just a little bit on a tiny piece of sushi and sat back as my nostrils caught fire. This stuff was awesome. The best part, however, was when Ben had not yet learned to fear the Wasabi, he put a really healthy helping of it on one of his rolls, and ate it. I only learned of his mistake when I heard him cough. And cough again. Then his eyes watered, and I saw the most pathetic look on his face that I've ever seen. Naturally, being the kind of friend that I am, I sat back, laughed at the expression on his face, and waited for the spell to pass. It did. Eventually.

At this point we had effectively done everything there was to do in Dunedin, so we continued on our great adventure. Because we love you guys sooo much, and we didn't actually get to take any pictures of the elusive Blue Penguin, we had heard that the Blue Penguin colony at Oamaru was pretty awesome. So we headed there. Only to learn that it was effectively the same thing that we had done in the less commercial Pilot's beach. So we decided that it wasn't worth another 30 dollars to see the same thing again, but, as we were leaving, Ben found a brochure.

Now, I don't know if I've told you this before, but Ben's a dirty drunk. He much prefers whiskey over other types of booze, which instantly earns him that moniker. Theoretically, Dunedin had the country's only whiskey distillery, which was another thing we were supposed to do at Dunedin. Unfortunately, it had closed up years before, rendering it impossible for Ben to get a taste or a tour. So, being the determined engineer that he is, he went on the Internet, found out that the original distillery was called Wilson's had folded up, and another company, Milford, had bought up all of Wilson's last few casks, and was selling them wholesale. We thought nothing of this until Ben found a Milford brochure at the Penguin Colony in Oamaru. We didn't know what to expect, but we were both shocked with what we got. A private tour of the new, budding distillery that's trying to get it's fresh start. They're using the casks of the Wilson whiskey as venture capital to start up a new distillery, and we lucked into getting a private tour (and tasting for Ben) with the master distiller himself. It was awesome, we just sat there and talked to the guy for about 45 minutes while Ben sat and sampled the beverages. The guy even seemed kinda touched when we asked him for a picture later:


We then continued on to Timaru, where we booked a hostel with a bunch of awesome, friendly people. We played 3-D connect four, chess (Ben's better than me now . . . maybe), and we crashed, surprised and content at the way the day went.