A dull grey morning with mizzling rain pushed us swiftly out of Portobello and into Dunedin. There really was very little going on and our first stop, at the art gallery, was a bit of a flop. In spite of having a Laurie and a Monet, the surrounding pieces and set up gave us very little reason to stay. After extensive reading of the I-site's guide to Dunedin over coffee we were unsure of what else to see, though getting coffee itself was enough of a challenge as it required us yo have ID...
The Flemish Renaissance inspired train station was entertaining for all of about 5 minutes so we caved and took a tour around Cadbury world... The tour was very average and a lot of the chocolate concoctions very dubious, chocolate covered chewy mint marshmallow??? The factory wasn't running as it was a Sunday but our tour guide 100% made it for us. She was Japanese and absolutely stark raving bonkers. Her accent was barely intelligible, not helped by the headset and loudhailer she was using but what she lacked in elocution she made up for in enthusiasm. The entire group were completely bemused by her dancing around in her purple dungarees, miming everything she said, whilst repeating it 3 times for no apparent reason. We watched a tonne of liquid chocolate unnessecarily fall down a series of machines, learnt how they made 'jaffas' and ate too much chocolate!
We moved on, missing the steepest street in the world but stopping at the Mouraki boulders, which were quite spectacular 2m diameter spheres of rock isolated on the high tide line, exposed by coastal erosion. We managed to skip along a small strip of dry beach to reach them but after a few minutes it was clear that the tide was coming in fast, leaving us with quite a soggy dash back to the car.
During the onwards journey to Omaru we both had time to ponder how much we were enjoying being unemployed and whether we would ever be able to integrate back into normal society and hold down jobs with our minds constantly planning the next trip.
We arrived at the Top 10 campsite, ate chilli reheats (and a disgusting attempt a chicken soup - well done Watties) before adventuring to the local cinema to watch Focus. The film was really good, made even better by the tiny colonial theatre with only 2 other viewers!
Bed!