"Apologies for another message so soon, but apparently my original e-mail was too long for the facebook fascists, so I had to split it into 2 (editing it to remove the surplus rubbish would have taken too long I'm afraid and if I had done so I would probably have got another message saying it was too short!)
Continuing directly from my previous e-mail, the Antarctic Centre was expensive, as I said, but the exhibits were quite interesting, including a room where they took the temperature down to simulate a genuine Antarctic storm. In all honesty it felt like a slightly less damp version of an average winter in London, so I suspect they were pulling their punches a bit, probably out of some absurdly paternalistic desire to avoid killing too many tourists. But it was worth the entrance price just to see the tiny blue penguins being fed. Naturally most of them were given cutsie names like "Pedro" and "Bagpipes" although there was also an "Alex" who had broken both his beak and one of his limbs, so was obviously as clumsy as his ginger namesake. They also had a "Pingu" who turned out to be much more of a queue barger and womaniser than his fictional counterpart. Most of the time I have not had too much trouble with the New Zealand accent, but on this occasion I must have misheard something as the penguin feeder mentioned during the session that the reason the oldest penguin, "Toto", had lived so long was because he did not have to worry about any creditors. Mind you, they have occasionally had problems understanding me as well (the horse riding people I mentioned in my previous e-mail, who got all excited about the horse on my Lloyds TSB card, had written my name down as Mr Crockflab after I called them, which was almost as bad as the "Mr Cockhard" my father once got at a Chinese restaurant).
After Christchurch we went on to Mount Cook, which really is in the middle of nowhere, and it was at this point that the landscape really started to get more spectacular and also much more empty and devoid of people, the South Island having a much smaller population than the North Island. It was also a lot more rural, as was evidenced by the house which was using a microwave for a post box (presumably the Kiwi equivalent of a hotmail account). Mount Cook was spectacular, even though the tour of the glacial lake we had booked had to be cancelled because if we had gone on it they said we would probably have been flattened by a passing iceberg.
We then travelled to Dunedin (following a brief stop off in Queenstown, one of my favourite towns in New Zealand and one we returned to for a lengthier stay later on). Dunedin is home to the steepest street in the world. This is a few kilometres out of town, but I am convinced that our hostel must have been on top of the second steepest. However, we had to choose the hostel based on its name alone, which was Hogwartz, spelled with a "z" to avoid confusion with the place I went to school. Unfortunately I think they must assume that all guests have their own broomstick or hippogriff, and as we were equipped with neither we got very fit climbing the hill dozens of times during our two day stay, even though once again a lot of this was undone when we took part in a tour of Cadbury's World conducted by a tubby Willy Wonka in dungarees.
We managed to get through the tour without falling victim to the evil machinations of the Oompa Loompas, and we did get a fair bit of chocolate, but unfortunately to maximise one's chocolate intake during the tour one had to answer the tough questions set by the guide, and an elderly gentleman on our tour had obviously been on it before (in fact he probably went on it every day) and was firing off answer after answer, pocketing chocolate bar after chocolate bar whilst quietly cackling to himself. Eventually Julie managed to get an answer in, but I suspect that if I hadn't been fixing him with my steely glare at the time, this chocolate snatching, geriatric Augustus Gloop would probably have clamped his hand around her mouth and shaken her to the point of insensibility to prevent her from getting the answer in before he did.
We followed this tour with a scenic train journey, taking in such exotic sights as the Taieri Gorge and the quaintly named "Arthur's Knob", and then a tour of Speight's Brewery in the evening, which was particularly wonderful as they finished the tour by leaving us alone in a room with 6 beer taps (only for 15 minutes, alas). Having exhausted the delights of Dunedin, we went back to Queenstown the following day, and I will relate the highlights of this last part of our NZ tour, and indeed our subsequent trip to Sydney, in a fourth and (mercifully) final e-mail in a week or so.
Bye for now
Al"
After Christchurch we went on to Mount Cook, which really is in the middle of nowhere, and it was at this point that the landscape really started to get more spectacular and also much more empty and devoid of people, the South Island having a much smaller population than the North Island. It was also a lot more rural, as was evidenced by the house which was using a microwave for a post box (presumably the Kiwi equivalent of a hotmail account). Mount Cook was spectacular, even though the tour of the glacial lake we had booked had to be cancelled because if we had gone on it they said we would probably have been flattened by a passing iceberg.
We then travelled to Dunedin (following a brief stop off in Queenstown, one of my favourite towns in New Zealand and one we returned to for a lengthier stay later on). Dunedin is home to the steepest street in the world. This is a few kilometres out of town, but I am convinced that our hostel must have been on top of the second steepest. However, we had to choose the hostel based on its name alone, which was Hogwartz, spelled with a "z" to avoid confusion with the place I went to school. Unfortunately I think they must assume that all guests have their own broomstick or hippogriff, and as we were equipped with neither we got very fit climbing the hill dozens of times during our two day stay, even though once again a lot of this was undone when we took part in a tour of Cadbury's World conducted by a tubby Willy Wonka in dungarees.
We managed to get through the tour without falling victim to the evil machinations of the Oompa Loompas, and we did get a fair bit of chocolate, but unfortunately to maximise one's chocolate intake during the tour one had to answer the tough questions set by the guide, and an elderly gentleman on our tour had obviously been on it before (in fact he probably went on it every day) and was firing off answer after answer, pocketing chocolate bar after chocolate bar whilst quietly cackling to himself. Eventually Julie managed to get an answer in, but I suspect that if I hadn't been fixing him with my steely glare at the time, this chocolate snatching, geriatric Augustus Gloop would probably have clamped his hand around her mouth and shaken her to the point of insensibility to prevent her from getting the answer in before he did.
We followed this tour with a scenic train journey, taking in such exotic sights as the Taieri Gorge and the quaintly named "Arthur's Knob", and then a tour of Speight's Brewery in the evening, which was particularly wonderful as they finished the tour by leaving us alone in a room with 6 beer taps (only for 15 minutes, alas). Having exhausted the delights of Dunedin, we went back to Queenstown the following day, and I will relate the highlights of this last part of our NZ tour, and indeed our subsequent trip to Sydney, in a fourth and (mercifully) final e-mail in a week or so.
Bye for now
Al"
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