From plus 40 to 20 degrees, from shorts and tees to long pants and layers, wine tours to chocolate factories, kangaroos to royal albatross, and from a nice little car to a 15 speed, 6 ton camper van. I jest, it is actually a 5 speed manual on a Ford one ton frame.
The first day we drove south about 350 kms to the city of Dunedin. Well first Loreen and I had a discussion about taking the one ton downtown Christchurch in weekday traffic. I finally laid out on the floor and screamed and kicked my heels against the wall to fully express my angst about trying to navigate this in a strange city, heavy traffic while learning how to drive the beast.
The trip to Dunedin was mostly through farm land and while we saw some sheep it was mostly big dairy farms. Unlike Canada, the dairy cows here are still allowed to go out on walk abouts, not confined to barns all their life, although there is one corporate farm on the north island, milking about 19,000 cows that have went to confined herds. The public outcry was so huge that the government has not allowed any more farms to go to confined herds. Similar to Canada the bulk of the cows are Holstein, but every herd has a number of Jersey or Guernsey to keep the milk fat content higher, this is maybe why we Canucks import milk solids from NZ to make most of our ice cream products. Visiting some of the farmers here I learned that the holstein in NZ has not been selectively bred over generations to increase milk production to almost abnormal production rates, cows here are smaller and produce about 60% of the Canadian cows. There are supposed to be 38 million sheep in NZ and Loreen thinks the dairy herd must be close to that. Dairy is a big export product here with milk solids being sold heavily into the Asian market along with other places.
Dunedin is a city of 111,000 of mostly Scottish and Irish descent. It was originally named new Edinburg, the name was changed to Dunedin, which is a slang of the Gaelic words which, mean New Edinburgh. A port city, it is built within a small valley amongst a lot of hills. There are lots of streets that are 10 to 12% slope and it has the worlds steepest street, yes it beats San Francisco, at a 19% grade. Loreen wants to hike it one morning, I am starting to get early symptoms of a migraine! Dunedin was laid out by a Scottish land company and is very similar to the cities of Scotland, complete with a center square in the shape of an octagon.
We visited the Cadbury Chocolate factory - it is the largest chocolate factory in NZ and produces about 32 thousand kilograms of chocolate a year. About half for NZ markets and the balance for the export market. On site is a 5 storey tower where they pump up a ton of melted milk chocolate and then dump it for every tour that goes through. Just a chocolate waterfall that takes about 30 seconds. Throughout the tour they give out chocolate treats and at one point a sample cup of warm melted Cadbury's Dairy Milk, yum, yum. We both left with a goody bag of chocolate and I wanted to take the tour again, but Loreen wasn't up to it:o)
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| Chocolate Tower |
Then while on our way to a brewery for a tour with beer samples, Loreen says "Oh my God!, then this women coming towards says the same thing. I was trying to figure out what couple we had met in Oz was in Dunedin, but it was a couple from Dawson Creek that had worked at the college with Loreen. They are in NZ for six weeks and we just bumped into them on the street, what a small world and a great reason to spend a couple of evenings visiting and sampling Kiwi wine.
The brewery tour was great, and the tasting room even better. This company has about 70% of the market share in NZ and make five different products. We were able to try them all and even pour for ourselves. I tried to convince everyone that each time I went to the bar I was drawing the second glass for Loreen, but they may have seen through my ploy.
Well after the chocolate and beer we decided to go and see some of New Zealand's native species, fur seals, yellow eyed penguins, sea lions and the royal albatross.
First up was the albatross, the largest sea bird in the world. The Royal can get up to about 4.5 feet in length with a wing span of 11.5 feet, but the bones are hollow and they only weigh about 16 pounds. There are about 21,000 breeding pairs, they mate for life and can live into their sixties, and only one one nesting site, at Dunedin, located on mainland. These birds raise their young, kick the young out and then head off by themselves for a year, before coming back to the nest to raise another batch of young. While gone they spend all their time on the ocean and go as far as South America.
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| Royal Albatross |
The Yellow Eyed Penguin is the rarest of all penguin species and only found in New Zealand. Almost extinct, due to introduced predators from England, these penguins are now starting to recover due to conservation methods. They do not migrate and live as individuals rather than in colonies as other penguins do. The adults spend all their time going to sea, catching food and bringing it home to feed their chicks. Pretty much like humans!
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| Yellow Eyed Penguin |
New Zealand Fur seals and whaling are what brought European settlement to New Zealand. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1800's, the fur seal has recovered from about 200 to around 100,000 adults. These critters spend a good part of the day at sea hunting and then come back to the rocky shores to rest, sun and feed the young. The pups (which are adorable) are left by themselves on high rocky shores with little pools while the Moms fish for the day. This protects the little one form predators and also teaches them social skills for later in life. When the Mothers reach shore they have no idea where their young are at so they crawl up on a rock and then repeatedly call for the young. Eventually pups will make their way to the Moms and nurse.
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| Pups Playing |
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| Nursing |
Hooker Sea lions are the rarest of the five species of sea lions and were hunted to near extinction by the Maori. There are two small communities of these sea lions in New Zealand, one at the very south of the Island and the one at Dunedin. Although they tolerate humans, they have been known to give chase to the odd human that got to close, and weighing up to 900 pounds and being able to travel at 20kms per hour, we did keep our distance. The day previous a young female had chased a group of tourists down the beach, but the guide told us she was just wanting to play.
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| Sea Lion |
We will next be going inland then up to the north end of the South Island.
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