(no subject)
SO Onto Day FOUR:
THat day it was up early to go on our Off-site activities.
My bus left at 8am and dropped us in Dunedin town centre. The 8 of us on our tour had a coffee while we waited for the 'official' tour guides.
They turned up (one was a policeman who does sea kayak tours on his day off and he was kinda hot) and we jumped in the cars and took off for the little bay.
On the way one of the Rovers nearly got himself arrested by forgetting his seatbelt..with a copper driving! IDIOT!
We got to the beach and signed our waver forms and we were into the kayaks. In doubles, i shared with a North Island Rover who was pretty cool.
The kayak trip went for a few hours and was THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER!!!!!
We had two sealions who followed us and played around our kayaks for the whole trip! THey were so close that we could have touched them (except they had big scary teeth and our guides told us not to) It was so incredible being that close to nature and interacting with them.
They popped their heads up and looked in our boats and everything, they were quite inquisitive little (Read as MASSIVE) things.
Our kayak trip went around the cliffs where there was a seal colony situated and we watched the lazy ones who didn't wnat to come near our boats as they sunbaked and slept. We also passed the Albatross colony, but didn't see many birds.
We saw a couple of Shags drying their wings. Interesting creatures. THey dive for their food, but unlike penguins aren't waterproof, so you see them standing on rocks (Or in this case an old pier pylon) with their wings spread out, drying themselves in the wind. Hence the saying 'shag on a rock'
We also saw their nests up on the cliffs, whcih look like little anthills from a distance, apparently they're all made of poop!
On the way back in, after bouncing around in the waves in the Pacific Ocean for a while we grabbed some seaweed to torment the boys with. One of our guides said that it was edible, and he ate some to encourage us to try it. IT wasn't the greatest tasting thing i've ever eaten. Kind of tasted like snowpeas, whith a really reallly strange aftertaste. Difficult to describe.
Once we got back to shore, we re-loaded the kayaks into the trailers then headed back to Dunedin, where we got dropped off at the Cadbury factory for our tour. It was a bit dull, being Easter there was no-one working in the factory, so the tour was condensed down. THe chocolate waterfall in the old Silo was pretty cool though, and we had our photo taken with the Easter Bunny!. AND FREE SAMPLES!
The next stop was the one everyone (being typical ROvers) was looking forward to and that was teh Speights Factory. Speights is the beer of choice in the SOuthern parts of NZ.
Not the greatest beer in my opinoin but hey.
The brewery was REALLY interesting. It was an old brewery, still in use however. IT was gravity fed, which means that the ingredients are deliveered to the top story and then sent down the factory for each part of the process. All the beer is brewed the same way they've done it since they first started, in copper machines.
After the tour we had a beer tasting. The man showing us was very informative and treated the beer tasting like a wine tasting. IT was pretty cool. We tried their regular beers as well as their 'gourmet' or boutique beers.My favorite was the wheat beer. An interesting piece of trivia is that most beer drinkers 'guzzle' it and only end up tasting the beer on the back of their tongue and that's where the 'bitter' taste buds are. To really appreciate the full extent of the beer flavour you need to taste it on the tip of your toungue.
We were also taught how to pull a beer on tap, we got small glasses but had to pull our own beers when we tasted them.
Our tour group after that was worried about having sausages for dinner again (We'd had sausages for every meal the day before!) and so we managed to convince our bus driver to stop at a Fish&Chip shop and we bought hot chips.
Dinner was actually Corned Beef which was great, but the Chips didn't spoil our appetite.
It was too cold for the planned costume I had for that night, but one of the Aussies had managed to source a number of graduate caps, so I just wore one of them for the Scholars shin-dig.
Later that night the MOC dragged an old couch into the campfire circle and set it alight...something different. Not sure why but hey!
The next day was tug-of-war and then....THE DEER STALKERS BALL ..(To be continued)
THat day it was up early to go on our Off-site activities.
My bus left at 8am and dropped us in Dunedin town centre. The 8 of us on our tour had a coffee while we waited for the 'official' tour guides.
They turned up (one was a policeman who does sea kayak tours on his day off and he was kinda hot) and we jumped in the cars and took off for the little bay.
On the way one of the Rovers nearly got himself arrested by forgetting his seatbelt..with a copper driving! IDIOT!
We got to the beach and signed our waver forms and we were into the kayaks. In doubles, i shared with a North Island Rover who was pretty cool.
The kayak trip went for a few hours and was THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER!!!!!
We had two sealions who followed us and played around our kayaks for the whole trip! THey were so close that we could have touched them (except they had big scary teeth and our guides told us not to) It was so incredible being that close to nature and interacting with them.
They popped their heads up and looked in our boats and everything, they were quite inquisitive little (Read as MASSIVE) things.
Our kayak trip went around the cliffs where there was a seal colony situated and we watched the lazy ones who didn't wnat to come near our boats as they sunbaked and slept. We also passed the Albatross colony, but didn't see many birds.
We saw a couple of Shags drying their wings. Interesting creatures. THey dive for their food, but unlike penguins aren't waterproof, so you see them standing on rocks (Or in this case an old pier pylon) with their wings spread out, drying themselves in the wind. Hence the saying 'shag on a rock'
We also saw their nests up on the cliffs, whcih look like little anthills from a distance, apparently they're all made of poop!
On the way back in, after bouncing around in the waves in the Pacific Ocean for a while we grabbed some seaweed to torment the boys with. One of our guides said that it was edible, and he ate some to encourage us to try it. IT wasn't the greatest tasting thing i've ever eaten. Kind of tasted like snowpeas, whith a really reallly strange aftertaste. Difficult to describe.
Once we got back to shore, we re-loaded the kayaks into the trailers then headed back to Dunedin, where we got dropped off at the Cadbury factory for our tour. It was a bit dull, being Easter there was no-one working in the factory, so the tour was condensed down. THe chocolate waterfall in the old Silo was pretty cool though, and we had our photo taken with the Easter Bunny!. AND FREE SAMPLES!
The next stop was the one everyone (being typical ROvers) was looking forward to and that was teh Speights Factory. Speights is the beer of choice in the SOuthern parts of NZ.
Not the greatest beer in my opinoin but hey.
The brewery was REALLY interesting. It was an old brewery, still in use however. IT was gravity fed, which means that the ingredients are deliveered to the top story and then sent down the factory for each part of the process. All the beer is brewed the same way they've done it since they first started, in copper machines.
After the tour we had a beer tasting. The man showing us was very informative and treated the beer tasting like a wine tasting. IT was pretty cool. We tried their regular beers as well as their 'gourmet' or boutique beers.My favorite was the wheat beer. An interesting piece of trivia is that most beer drinkers 'guzzle' it and only end up tasting the beer on the back of their tongue and that's where the 'bitter' taste buds are. To really appreciate the full extent of the beer flavour you need to taste it on the tip of your toungue.
We were also taught how to pull a beer on tap, we got small glasses but had to pull our own beers when we tasted them.
Our tour group after that was worried about having sausages for dinner again (We'd had sausages for every meal the day before!) and so we managed to convince our bus driver to stop at a Fish&Chip shop and we bought hot chips.
Dinner was actually Corned Beef which was great, but the Chips didn't spoil our appetite.
It was too cold for the planned costume I had for that night, but one of the Aussies had managed to source a number of graduate caps, so I just wore one of them for the Scholars shin-dig.
Later that night the MOC dragged an old couch into the campfire circle and set it alight...something different. Not sure why but hey!
The next day was tug-of-war and then....THE DEER STALKERS BALL ..(To be continued)