Ah well, it couldn't last, I suppose. After a couple of days in Akaroa, I continued my journey south. After dropping off my first long-distance passenger (one of the German girls who was working at the hostel, who needed a lift to Christchurch) I hit the road properly. By the time I'd got myself organised - and got my ear syringed, which cost me $20 and produced an amusingly large lump of wax - it seemed sensible to drive until I reached Timaru, which is roughly halfway between Christchurch and Dunedin. Interesting place, Timaru. Well, I say interesting. I really mean ugly, horrible, weird, and utterly dead. I checked into Toru Toru Wha, a large hostel on what is laughably described as the main street. I quickly realised that I was the only guest. This meant I had free use of the pool table (missing two balls) and TV lounge (with a selection of films on video). After sussing out that there was nothing to do in Timaru, I was joined in the hostel by seven Austrian snowboarders heading up the coast. They seemed to have had a chillier reception than me. The woman at reception (who was Basil and Sybil Fawlty rolled into one) greeted them by telling them there was a cheaper backpacker place up the road. I asked if they were planning to explore Timaru's nightlife, but one of them said they "weren't into that". Instead, they played pool by hitting the balls as hard as possible and laughing uproariously every time one of the balls flew across the room. From 8pm until about 2am. Easily amused, these snowboarders. I retreated to the TV lounge and watched The Fifth Element instead. It wasn't hard to leave Timaru the next morning. I stopped at Oamaru for lunch, which seemed a much nicer place but about as busy as Timaru. After trying and failing to buy a new car stereo (at this point just about clawing the steering wheel off at the quality of whatever radio stations I could get any reception for) I kept on going until I reached Dunedin. The "Edinburgh of the South" does indeed bear some similarities with its ancient namesake (Edinburgh used to be called Dunedin). The weather was cold and wet, the streets are a nightmare to navigate because they keep changing names unexpectedly, and it's a pain in the neck getting parked. It's also home to the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street. The road up to the Elm Lodge hostel isn't as steep, but feels it. There are obvious Scottish connections here. In the city centre, which is called the Octagon, there is a statue of Robbie Burns looking towards the sea. The street names too have a distinctly Scottish feel, many of them sharing names with streets in Edinburgh (York Place, Corstorphine Road, Portobello Road). There were also two Scots in my room at the hostel, but they turned out to be astonishingly dull. At least they matched the brainless Canadian who worked during the day and spent every other waking moment watching crap TV. I spent a fair amount of the first day on the internet (this drivel doesn't write itself, you know) and had a walk around to see the sights in Dunedin (like the railway station, which might be the most photographed building in NZ). Then I drove along the Otago peninsula, which has a great winding road along the shore with no barrier along most of it. Right at the end is the world's only mainland Royal Albatross colony (although I didn't actually see any). After returning to Elm Lodge, I felt myself starting to go slightly mad. It's a nice place, two converted houses with their own hot tub in the back garden, but at this stage I wanted to see if Dunedin's nightlife was anything like Edinburgh's. One of the other guests, AJ (who is 21, English, and has spent the last five years travelling and working as a croupier) was in the TV room, and didn't need much persuasion to go to the pub. We were joined by his Dutch room-mate Nadia. Sadly none of us had our cameras with us, because it quickly turned into one of these unplanned nights that end up being a great laugh. After a few beers, shots and cocktails, AJ and I joined the two-man band outside the Lemon Room and sang backing vocals to their rendition of U2's "With Or Without You". Being Scottish, I insisted that we go to the Robert Burns pub. Strangely, the music was being provided by a jazz band consisting of 80-year-old men. I mentioned to one of the locals that this didn't seem very Scottish to me, and he told me that this "isn't really a Scottish place, it's more about Robert Burns, because he's a big hero here". New Zealand logic at its best. After getting up at a reasonable time the next morning to get my new car stereo fitted (finally I can listen to my own music!) I ran into Nadia, who was on her way to Cadbury World. Dunedin has its own chocolate factory, so this seemed like a perfect hangover cure. It's a massive place, and after donning some attractive hairnets we joined the tour to see how milk chocolate is made, how Easter eggs are formed (they're constantly rotated in moulds as the chocolate cools, sadly not laid by chocolate chickens) and watched some DVD presentations about the history of the factory. In one of the massive silos outside, we were treated to a unique experience - the world's only chocolate waterfall. As we lined up around the inside of the walls, a tonne of molten chocolate was released and cascaded into a large hopper, which was encrusted with flakes of chocolate that had splashed out. Utterly pointless, but great fun. Incidentally, they make Easter eggs non-stop from June to January, and they're all eaten within the space of a week. At least Jesus Christ can rest assured that he wasn't crucified for nothing. Later on I went on another tour, this time in the Speights brewery. The guide was a long-bearded Glaswegian with a dry sense of humour and an exaggerated disdain for women, and we walked around the various parts of the brewery. Somehow it wasn't as interesting as the chocolate factory, although I preferred the end product. After a few samples of various Speights beers, I met up with AJ again and we went for a meal and a quiet drink or two. Needless to say, for the second night in a row this turned into an impromptu pub crawl, during which we happened to meet Amy and Sara, two English girls he already knew. I had planned to leave on Saturday morning, but somehow failed to do so. After an all-day breakfast AJ and I drove out to Larnach Castle, New Zealand's only castle. Nice place with spectacular views across the peninsula, even though the NZ interpretation of "castle" is similar to the Australian version of "mountain". I don't think you can really call it a castle when it only has about five bedrooms, but each to their own. After a spell of sitting in the hot tub drinking wine and listening to Johnny Cash, we headed out again to meet up with Amy and Sara for a few drinks (we were all DEFINITELY going to leave on Sunday morning, so it was just going to be a few drinks). Thanks to randomly meeting a Samoan guy, his French friend and a local, we ended up being invited to someone's 21st birthday party. I had heard that Dunedin was a big student city, and this was the first real sign of them. The party was on Castle Street North, and the Samoan guy (whose name I have completely forgotten) told us that there were about seven other parties going on in the same street. It certainly seemed to be where most of the students lived. We stayed at the 21st party for a few drinks, but then (since we hadn't brought much beer in case it was rubbish) headed back towards town. This is where it gets weirder. First, we ran into two girls in nurses' outfits, who AJ managed to insult by asking them why their hair wasn't completely contained by their hairnets. Then we were invited into the next party by an astonishingly drunk 19-year-old Jamie Oliver lookalike in a Tigger costume, brandishing a plastic food processer jug full of what seemed to be lemonade and vodka, and telling everyone who'd listen that he was a lion and not a tiger. There were quite a few people in fancy dress and beer being handed out freely, so we stayed for a while and watched one local waving a burning stick around while everyone else stood around the metal drum containing the bonfire. The four of us were older than everyone else, although I've been ID'd buying alcohol twice in the last week and Alex (Tigger) . AJ started telling people he was a 27-year-old Irish doctor who was born in Spain, I suggested Amy should claim to be an MP (I meant Member of Parliament, but it turned into Military Police instead), Sara became a fire-fighter, and - in honour of our host - I decided to be a lion-tamer. After chatting to a Jedi knight (and after Tigger had offered to set me up with about five different women, although he promptly forgot about it since he could barely even remember his own name) we saw the fire-dancer jump over the metal drum, knocking it over and sending burning wood everywhere. He then decided to try and pick it up, burning his hand. Luckily AJ was now a 27-year-old doctor, so he was on hand to clean up the wound before we decided to leave these drunken young fools and their free beer. Students, eh?