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My most sincere apologies for the lack of entries lately, Kev and I have been going quite hard since the Milford Track trying to see what we had left of the South Island, before we had to meet Marcos (Kev's friend from high school and I met him when we were all at Queen's). In addition, I also apologise for all of those random little dots on the map without a detailed entry. I was just using those to show you where we've been.
Not much to describe on the way through the south from Te Anau to Dunedin. This area is known as the Catlins and is meant to be quite scenic. However, in comparison to the rest of the country it sort of seems (and I hate to say this) boring. Rolling hills and sheep as far as the eye could see, combined with the greenest grasses. It would take a serious effort to find a blade of dead grass.
Highlights of the drive included a spectacular sunset at Porpoise Beach (we were however disappointed with the lack of mammals for which the beach was named), and Jack's Blowhole (a geological formation about 200m inland for the southern coast of New Zealand – which, at high tide shoots up spray as the blowhole of a whale would – we did not time this quite right). And then onto Dunedin.
In Dunedin we were meant to meet up with Mark and Emma (Dr. and Dr. from the Milford Track), however it turns out that when I googled a bar to meet at, I forgot to specify that the Dunedin bar I wanted was located in Dunedin, New Zealand rather than Dunedin, Scotland. So, unfortunately we missed each other. I have learned a valuable lesson.
Onto Dunedin. I found Dunedin to be an interesting city. This is mostly due to the fact that it was the first real city we'd seen since Christchurch. We couldn't resist the famous Cadbury World. I don't know if my expectations were too high for this tour, but after smelling all of the chocolate I definitely felt quite sick. Literally, the guide, Cacao Joe, dressed complete in Cadbury's purple overalls, was the human version of an Oompa-Loompa. All he did was guide us through the factory - with many free samples (a redeeming part of the tour). All in all, I did not find the tour particularly informative or nearly as imaginative as I had hoped it would be.
From Cadbury World we head to the Speight's Brewery tour. After the disappointing Cadbury World, my expectations were not too high, However, as I'm sure most all of you know, I enjoy my beer far more than I enjoy my chocolate. Greeted by the tour guide who dutifully tried to convince me that my surname, Kagan, was undoubtely Irish and that he could have sworn that my heritage dated back into the Irish Potato Famine where my family would have left Ireland and changed our name. I tried to convince him that it came from the Hebrew for Kohanim, however for the tour I became Canadian-Irish Mike. This guided tour was excellent, and I'm not just saying that because of the 6 different Speight's beers we were able to sample at the end. The guide was informative and funny, and to top it off I learned several more random facts. A firkin actually refers to the size of a keg, and to Skull (or chug for you Canadians) refers to the toast made by Nordic warriors when they drank out of the skull of their enemies. What was truly amazing is that Speight's holds about 42% of the market share of New Zealand beer, but that's not the amazing part. The amazing part is that it's actually quite good (and I do consider myself somewhat of a beer connoisseur). Molson and Labatt could learn a thing or two.
previous travel blog entry
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