Ryan's Journey to New Zealand

Headed down to Dunedin, which is a university town with a Scottish feel.

CADBURY CHOCOLATE FACTORY
We started out our stay in Dunedin with a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. The tour itself wasn’t great as the factory was closed down for a break between production periods. However, that didn’t stop them from giving out tons of free chocolate. Everyone had to wear hairnets, and if you had a large enough beard, they had one for your face too. It was pretty funny. You're not allowed cameras or anything in the tour, so no one pulls Willy Wonka type tricks.

(Giant chocolate bunny. Cadbury eggs are the best)

SPEIGHTS BREWERY TOUR
After the Chocolate tour, we headed to the Speight’s Brewery (yes, we visited a chocolate factory and a brewery in the same day). Speight’s is the largest domestic beer, similar to Molson Canadian. So you see the advertisements everywhere. The tour guide was hilarious, and had a lot of good stories about people who had come to visit (such as when the New Zealand Governor General visited, and had to drive home when her driver drank too much at the open bar).

(Mr. Speight's Beer and I)

(Lots of beer....)

(Keight, the tour guide giving a little demo on how to use the beer tabs)

The main part of the tour is the open bar at the end, to ‘test’ each of the different beers. It was no mistake that we booked ourselves on the 7:00pm tour. We drank as many beers as possible in that 40 minutes. I don’t think I have ever been so full from beer in my life as that.

(Look at that goofy grin of excitement)

After that, naturally our Speight’s tour group decided to keep the party going, and we headed down the road to the next bar. We ended up having a hilarious night as we cruised the Dunedin bar scene.

(the group at one of the stops on the pub crawl)

OTAGO UNIVERSITY
The next day I headed down to Otago University to checkout the campus. It was a lot of fun being back on a university campus and taking in the atmosphere. It was even better knowing that I didn’t have to do any work. I walked through the student ghetto, and saw all the same things as Queen’s student ghetto. Some things never change.

ELM WILDLIFE TOUR
The Otago peninsula is known for its wildlife. First we headed to the Royal Albatross colony. Albatross are glider birds with a 3 meter wingspan. They can glide up to 100km/h, and can travel upwards of 700km in a day. They live out at sea for over a year (they never go to land!) This is the only mainland Albatross colony left in the world.

(On the lookout...)

We then head to an isolated beach. Next we saw New Zealand Fur Seal.

(A fur seal hanging out)

Next we walked along the beach, beside all the Sealions. Male Sealions can weigh up to 900 pounds. There are only 15 female Sealions left in New Zealand. We were lucky to see 2 females on the beach we were at. Sealions can be unpredictable, so the guide made sure we have them tons of room.

(A male with the two females. Lucky guy)

Because of the time of day, the sealions were mostly sleeping. So not very good for pictures and such. However, one got up and puked while we were walking by. I got it on video. The smell was horrible.

(Warning...video of Sealion puking. No download required, just push play)

Further down the beach, we arrived just at the penguins were coming in for the night (they spend the day out in the ocean hunting). They ware hilarious to watch waddling across the beach to safety.

(2 penguins cleaning themselves, with a seagull in the background)

That night, our tour guide gave us some tips on good food in the student ghetto (he had been a student at Otago University). It’s their frosh week right now, so I enjoyed watching all the frosh heading to their activities.