Dunedin, home of Cadbury world and the production place of almost all New Zealand's Cadbury chocolate, along with a few other places. Also home to some very steep streets which was immediately apparent. We worked our way through the maze like streets of Dunedin, eventually reaching our campsite. The day on the site has little to tell as it was a organise and sort day so we were busy but of the uninteresting nature.

The following day was to be much more fun, especially for anyone with a desire for chocolate and plenty of it. Surprisingly the Cadbury world was right in the centre of the town, not on an industrial estate somewhere as you may expect a chocolate factory to be. We were lucky enough to find a parking space that had time left on the meter so we only had a to add 50 cents, to give us a couple of hours. The outer of the building as you can see has had some funky art work added to the doors, and the inner of the first part which is a self guided tour is all bright and characterised too. At the start of your turn you are given a goody bag with 1 bar of chocolate and your ticket in, but are told to hang onto the bag as they have a habit of filling up.

Our guide of which we forget her name, had us all put on those silly looking hair nets for hygiene then we were off into the factory. The smell of melted chocolate hits you the minute the door is opened, and continues throughout the tour in various varieties depending on what is been made, like caramel, banana, marshmellow, orange and so on. Each time we entered a new area as said, our goody bags had another 1 or sometimes 2 bars of chocolate added, some of which are only made in New Zealand, one of which is called 'perky nana'.

We also got to shell and taste our own coco beans as they are before they are made into chocolate, now if you are dark chocolate lover you may like the bitter taste in this but if not you would end up pulling that face like you had an orange that's a bit tart! We also got a bar of chocolate that is the most popular in New Zealand and is called 'Moro', which to us is an exact copy of a Mars bar.

The factory operates 24 hours a day and most jobs are done by machine that can produce and pack bars at ridiculous speed, the factory does supply chocolate to the UK as well as NZ but only on demand, and if there were to be a milk shortage they have enough freeze dried to continue production on full scale for 8 weeks!!!! After this little shocker we were lead into the rather large purple Cadbury branded syler, gathered round what can be described as a giant metal funnel we watched 1 ton of chocolate fall from the roof and down the funnel in 30 seconds. That's a lot of chocolate in 30 seconds, it did however spring 2 points to mind. Number 1 been what a waste of good chocolate as it would never be eaten, this was because it was just for fun for the visitors. Which brings us to point number 2, if they can waste that much chocolate in 30 seconds they are making far too much money!!!!

Easter eggs had been in production for some time already but were still on the go while we were there, these are one of the few items that can only be packed by humans as they are too delicate for the machines to handle. As well as been packed by humans any detail such as names, buttons etc are all put on the eggs by hand for the same reason, which explains why production is started so early as this is a time consuming job.

Our tour was concluded with a look around some old delivery vehicles, and a trip into the discount shop which you could only buy from if you had done the tour. We limited our spend and bought a curly whirly each, along with drinking chocolate and a big bar of black forest chocolate to share! Plus we had now collected a good bag full of freebies, which we planned to save for emergencies!

So with enough sugar loaded bars to sink a ship we navigated our way through the maze again to our next stop, this was the steepest street in the world! It is called Baldwin street and has a gradient of 1 in 2.86, which simply put is bloody steep! We had to take the challenge it sets of walking to the top where a seat awaits to peruse your efforts, while watching cars attempt the hill normally accompanied by a squealing engine in first gear at top revs!
Looking like we had completely lost the plot and have a nice little rest we got some good snaps to indicate for you how steep this hill was. At the bottom of the hill and old post office has been converted into a souvenir store which as many is full of tat.

Having now seen the main things Dunedin was famous for we used the rest of the day to update the blog site and do some shopping along with some unsuccessful clothes shopping as we needed some stuff for the Inca trail, but we still had time before we were leaving NZ altogether so not to worry. On our way out of Dunedin we found the restored railway building which we have since realised is the actual most photographed building in the southern hemisphere, not the chateau we told you originally so sorry for that miss info. And yes we did get some pics of this along with some rather old trains for Carina's Dad. Then that was it out of Dunedin and looking for a road side stop for the night, now don't get jealous but we found a rather nice spot just of the road next to the beach which with the sound of waves all night made us sleep like babies!