new zealand wrap-up

we are currently in the town of Waipu, which i had picked for the specific reason that it had nothing to do.  that's not entirely true ... i thought there would be a few activities, but enough boredom to force me to do some schoolwork and finish up my novel.  well, there is certainly no shortage of boredom.

there is one bar in town, which is conveniently attached to our hotel and is populated by old men gambling on horses, beginning from the early hour of 11 am.  there is one cafe called "y-not" and then an odd take-out place boasting "magic tasty" chinese and european food.  what exactly is "european food?"  i am imagining pierogies topped with spanikopita wrapped in a pizza on a bed of paella.  anyway, the only "fancy" sit-down restaurant is called the "pizza barn," however, when we tried to eat dinner there at 8:30 on a sunday, we found out that they were no longer accepting new dinner customers.  walking the streets, the entire town was abandoned.  i kid you not, the bolshevik shouted "helloooo?" down the street and it just echoed back at us.  8:30 pm.

anyhow, we will be off to melbourne, australia to visit my aunt and uncle!  but before we head over to OZ, i'd like to do a brief summary of some of our adventures that i had not previously discussed.  here goes:

we spent a couple of days in christchurch, despite the fact that the rugby games were cancelled because of all of the earthquake devastation.  i think it's important to continue giving business to areas that are struggling after a natural disaster.  while we were there the entire center of the city was fenced off due to the reconstruction work.  however, i've heard that they will soon be offering tours through the city center to see the devastation and the money will all go to rebuilding the city.  here at the city gate there was a memorial of sorts where people have left flowers and notes to their loved ones.  it was quite sad actually, but i'm glad we went.

we also went to a place called waitomo, where they have a system of caves that are full of glow worms.    we did this thing where we rappelled into a cave, went tubing inside the cave, then climbed out.  this picture doesn't really get the full effect, but you can see there are these little glowing dots behind us, which are in fact glow worms.  it was actually quite cool when we shut off our headlamps and then all of a sudden the cave was filled with all these brightly glowing dots that hadn't been there before.





while we were in dunedin, we visited baldwin street, which is the steepest street in the world.  (even steeper than in san francisco) ... which leads me to comment that new zealand loves to proclaim that they have the most superlative something: steepest street, tallest rock arch, most voluminous sea cave, etc etc (we have in fact seen all of these sights).  it was difficult to really photograph how steep it was.  this was the best we could do.  but it was seriously steep!

alright ... that is all i need to report on new zealand.  on to australia!

you won't get my chocolatey secrets: a cadbury factory tour

apparently, here in new zealand everyone thinks you're going to steal their recipe for everlasting gobstoppers.  so it wasn't a big surprise when we went to tour the cadbury factory that we weren't allowed to take our cameras.    but if you are wondering what it's like inside, it's pretty much exactly like this ... http://youtu.be/RZ-uV72pQKI (please ignore the strange 10 second anime intro)

one thing i have to say about cadbury is that they know how to run a tour ... a woman in a purple oompa-loomap-esque jumpsuit led us around the factory, her pockets laden with mini cadbury bars.  sometime she would pose a question to the group, such as, "where does cadbury get their milk from?"  the answer is right here in new zealand, and if you answer correctly, you get a piece of chocolate.  and if you answer incorrectly, you also get a piece of chocolate.  and sometimes you get a piece of chocolate just for climbing several flights of stairs or holding the door for someone.  brilliant.  i love the reward system.  i am way more prone to actively participate if chocolate is involved.

this actually would've been very helpful on a 4x4 excursion we took in tahiti.  our tour guide would stop for easily 15-20 minutes at a time and ramble on about various tahitian things, asking us questions that we didn't know the answers to and then waiting an uncomfortably long time before finally telling us the answer.  this process could've been made much more pleasant if there had been miniature cadbury bars involved.

the highlight of our tour was when we watched the chocolate "waterfall" inside a large chocolate silo (the silo housed chocolate and was not actually made of chocolate) ... the waterfall rapidly dumped one ton of chocolate in a rather spectacular cascade.  the tour guide told us that one ton of chocolate is worth about $5,000 NZ ... when asked what purpose this waterfall served in the chocolate making process, our tour guide said, "none ... it's just really cool." ahhh, new zealand.

by the end of our tour we had accumulated quite a large variety of cadbury products, not to mention all the chocolate and/or marshmallow-centered items we ate along the way.  (i think there is an unusually large amount of marshmallow here in NZ)  needless to say, we felt a bit ill upon exiting our tour.  and then we were suckered into eating an unprocessed cocoa bean, which tasted absolutely awful, and only got more repulsive the longer you chewed it (as shown here at right)