22/04/09

We were woken up to Dale shaking the camper and banging on the side as they said their goodbyes. We were supposed to have left before them, but it was freezing cold and I couldn't be arsed to get out of bed. I eventually got out of bed and parked the camper up just down the road from the Top10. We all walked in and showered. All the showers were in use so I ended up going in to an awesome single shower room with a sauna at the back and my own sink and toilet. Best shower ever. I picked the keys up off Pat as he was still shaving when I left and walked back to the van expecting to see Rich there. The girls arrived shortly after I got back and we sat around for ages waiting for Pat to finish. He came back, damp towel in hand and dumped it on top of Lauras, she looked a little bit peeved. Shortly after Pat returned there was a knock at the window so I wound it down, it was a guy in a Top10 jumper asking me if I had just been in to the holiday park to have a shower, I told him that I hadn't. He then asked if someone in a grey hoody was at the back of a van as he had followed him back from the shower, I turned around and looked at Pat, he was wearing a grey hoody, so he had to say that he'd just stolen a shower. The guy had a chat with us about the cheeck of stealing showers and that he had already caught 3 people this morning doing the same, we wondered if he had caught DnA. Apparently one of the guys had sped off nearly running over his toes, so he seemed happy that we were at least honest about it. He then asked how many of us were in the van, we responded 5, and he said 'I thought so'. He had been working when we stayed there on Friday night and let us know that most camp sites will always be a little weary when someone shows up in a 6 berth camper claiming there are only 4. We toyed with the idea of pulling in to Top10 to empty the waste and fill up with water but thought that might be pushing it a little bit so we went to the BP.

We spent the rest of the day driving from Queenstown to Dunedin, stopping every half an hour to pull over so the girls could use the toilet and arriving at about 1430 at the Octagon roundabout in the middle of the city. We did the usual info site visit to find out where to freedom camp, park during the day, and find out and book all our activities. We drove to a free parking area in the residential area and I had to spin the thing round in the middle of the road, as I was doing it some t*** in a bright orange done up car sped towards us at about 80 then made rather rude hand guestures towards me when he had to apply his brakes. What a cock! After lunch we drove off to find the best place to freedom camp and ended up driving down a road that was also a railway line. We drove further to try and find some better places but the roads were far to windy to bother driving later in the dark. We went back in to town and parked at the train station where some lovely bloke gave us his remaining time on his ticket saving us a few bucks.

Laura and I went to Global Gossip in McDonalds and discovered that it was in fact DnA that had been caught just before us taking showers at Top10 this morning. Helen seemed really keen on getting a chinese take away so we spent a while wandering around checking prices before coming to a mutual decision, Helen giving in, to sit in and have a curry as it was the same price. It was a real luxury having a meal, not having the stress of cooking and cleaning in a confined space and being able to sit at a table comfortably in the warmth and relax while we ate. I managed to steal 2 of their nice quilty bog rolls for the girls as we were leaving. My eyes were hurting and the back of my head was throbing, I think it was becuase of that kid hitting my in the head with the frisbee the other day. Laura didn't feel to good either so we went back to the camper while the others went for a few games of pool in a bar. We read for a bit when we got back, I finished my book and we had a chat for a few hours before the others got back. I then drove us back out to the area we had decided to camp for the night. We drove back over the road with a train line going through it and I was shocked to end up driving along behind a huge freight train going at about 5km/h, hell of a weird experience. We pulled up directly in front of an exeloo and soon realised that this was probably the noisiest place to stay. There was constant noise coming from the docks that sounded like someone dropping a crushed car in to a skip over and over again, then another huge train would go past just to mix things up a little bit.

23/04/09

Rich drove us back over to town in the morning and we parked up for the day in the train station. We were all up and ready with half an hour to spare, strange that when chocolate is involved we all seem to be ready on time. We left for our tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory at about 10. We spent half an hour reading about all the history of chocolate and got a chance to husk and eat some cocoa beans, they taste like nutty dark chocolate, really nice. As we started the tour we were all handed a hair net, even a baby had to wear a modified one that had been tied up at a few of the edges to make it fit. The funniest thing by far was the womans expression when she was Rich, she went 'Whoa! You're gonna need one of these' and handed him a snood. This woman seemed to be in her element, she just wandered around in a set of blue overalls handing kids bars of chocolate. We were each handed a goodie bag to carry around the factory with us and fill up along the way. Going around the factory reminded me of being at work, and some of the tours that used to come around, I'd always wonder why the hell they'd want to go on a tour around such a boring place and it made me feel like a bit of a tit. We didn't actually get to see that much on the tour, it was fairly boring, but we were handed 2 little bars of dairy milk and crunchie each. The woman made the mistake of leaving the bowls with the bars in unattended so in my mind it was a free-for-all, I walked over and took a huge handfull and filled my bag with them. As we went in to the Morro Bar packing area I once again got a nasty reminder of the bores of factory work, set of lights sitting atop the machine suddenly going from green to flashing red followed by a huge backlog of morro bars and all the workers rushing around attempting to keep up with the line by packing them by hand while some lazy engineer waddled over slowly and took his time attempting to fix it. The final part of the tour took us up the Purple Cadbury tower where they proceeded to drop 1 tonne of moltern chocolate from the top, in to a skip and let it drain out. As it hit the skip it sprayed all over the place, covering the bannisters and walls in a thick layer of chocolate. We all bought a block or two of chocolate from the shop, I got the 2 random flavours you don't often find in the shops just to try them.

We then headed back to the van, the girls decided to wander around the shops, I took my underwater camera to be developed and then chilled out in the library for a bit. On the way back to the camper I picked up the photos I had ordered. The photos were all abismal, I had no decent ones of Dolphins and only a few ok ones of the rafting. We off towards Baldwin St., the steepest street in the world and parked up at the bottom. It was one steep road, Pat and Helen spent ages trying to get a photo to show how steep it was and were never happy with the result. I attempted to walk down it on my hands on the way back, it wasn't as hard as I thought, I managed to get a good 10 or 15 metres before I started going too fast for my arms to carry me and had to cartwheel out of it to stop myself rolling all the way down. Rich bought a certificate from a pottery shop on the way down just so he had something to fill his new memories folder he had bought. In the evening we went back in to town, I used the net for a bit and was going to meet the girls in Starbucks afterwards but they weren't in there. I headed back to the camper and got there at bang on 1800 when we had agreed to meet. No one was there so I left a note letting them know that I had gone to check out the prices of the indoor karting. I walked for ages down the road before realising the karting place was the other side of the train track, so I had to back track about 2 km to get to the bridge to the other side. When I finally got there I found out that the place had shut down years ago. I got back to the camper at about 1840 but still no one was there. As I was writing another note the girls came back, turns out they were in Starbucks, just hiding away from me. Rich drove us back out to the spot we stayed at last night and we managed to get a decent night because nobody seemed to be working at the docks.

24/04/09

We woke up at about 9, it was my turn to drive but I couldn't be arsed to get out of bed. Eventually I was forced out of bed and drove back in to the city whilst the others all stayed in bed. We were heading towards a campsite to plug in for the day and I couldn't find the map we had been given so I was just going by landmarks and the map which only showed motorways and main roads on it. I got us to within 2km of the place but then had to pull over and ask someone to get the map out for me. We were just around the corner from the place. I pulled up to hop out and check prices, I pulled up in to a bus stop where a load of old blokes gave me a proper telling off about it, so I moved further down the road. We decided to stay but we would have to get busses back in to the city later. We parked up and all had showers then chilled out for a bit before deciding to get the bus. Everyone kept forgetting things and after saying that we would walk past the office as few times as possible and in 2 different groups we ended up walking back and forth over and over in a group of 5 just after paying for a powered site for 4. We ended up missing the 1200 bus because Helen suddenly decided that she wanted a cup of tea and something to eat, so we spent another 40 minutes waiting for the bus.

We finally arrived and spent a little bit of time on the net in the library. It has to be the worst net I've ever used, in 15 minutes I managed to respond to 1 message and none of the other messages even loaded, one of them even saying that it had offensive content in it and couldn't be displayed. What a piece of s***. We walked over to the Speights Brewery and waited for our tour to begin. It started off pretty well, we had a really good tour guide, much better than the chubby old woman from the Cadbury factory. The first fact we were given was that each of the 100+ workers at the factory were paid their wages and given a number 1 barrel every day that they showed up. The barrel contained 23 litres of 9 percent ale. As we progressed through the factory we were fed more facts, and learned the meaning of the term to skull a beer, it was from the days of the Vikings where they would take a head of an enemy clean it out and the first beer of the night must be chugged from their skull. We were also told that the beer used to be quality assessed by guys in white long johns that would sit in the beer and assess it depending on the coulour their johns went. We also learnt about the egyptians getting battered on fermented bread. At one point the factory had a huge rat problem so the genius solution was to get some cats involved, they soon sorted out the problem but created a kitten problem, there is a huge photo on one of the walls of the sacks of malt piled up with kittens littered all over them. At the end of the tour we got the chance to try all of the beers they produce. By far the best was Speights Gold Medal Ale, the rest were all pretty s*** compared. We all got the chance to pour a pint, all successfully apart from Rich. He coldn't do it to save his life, even after detailed instructions. He poured 3 glasses of just head, then once told to lower the glass he held it at the bottom and then flicked the tap on, causing the ale to come pouring out all over his hand rather than in the glass.

Rich, Pat and Helen had subways on the way back while Laura and I went to Countdown to get food for the night, hoping there would be something decent there. There was nothing decent to eat there so we ended up getting pies from the bakery. When we got back the guys sat down for a bit before heading off to the Rugby. The girls and I stayed in the van. I did the washing and drying while Laura cooked up a really nice meal with some of the left over fish and red pesto. Once we had finished we drove over to the city again and went to see Slum Boy Millionaire which was actually a really good film. We got back from the film about 10 minutes before the guys got back from the football, they had bought dominos pizza. Rich and I had another argument about the bed sharing rules before going to sleep.