Our ship docked in Dunedin in the early morning but there was a delay in getting everything set up at the port. We arrived in one of the the lounges to meet with our group for the day's excursion but they were not ready to go at the appointed time. We hung out in the lounge and snuck up to the buffet to get some extra food in the meantime. The more elderly crowd on the ship was not quite as patient as we were. We kept being told as soon as the bridge was set up to exit the ship and our bus was ready we'd be on our way. After about 20-30 minutes the "older" crowd got tired of waiting. Some of them started shouting "what's going on?" and "why aren't we going?" and a bunch of them started this slow clap. Not sure what that was supposed to do! Not to be rude, but these people are retired and are on vacation for most of the year at this point in their lives. What exactly are they in a hurry for? I heard one guy come up to the poor lady in charge of organizing the group and yelling at her. Apparently, he really loves chocolate. We found the whole scene quite amusing, especially the clapping. We started randomly breaking into slow claps throughout the rest of the trip. Anyway, soon enough we were on our way and we didn't miss any of the day's planned activities.
We arrived at the Cadbury building and took a factory tour. We weren't allowed to bring cameras on the tour with us. I think because we might take pictures and start producing Cadbury chocolate in our apartment at home. The tour included several free samples (including a cup of melted chocolate, yummy) along the way and we were given chocolate as prizes for every question we answered correctly during the tour. Score!
We entered one building towards the end of tour where almost everything was covered in chocolate. The carpet and the winding staircase we took to the top of the room had chocolate splattered everywhere. It looked like there had been some kind of chocolate explosion. When we reached the top we found out this building contained their "chocolate fountain." The guide turned on a machine and a huge waterfall of chocolate poured from the top all the way to the bottom of the building, splattering everything along the way with chocolate. This included people if they stood too close to the fountain. They don't actually make anything with the chocolate in this fountain. It is purely there for the delight of the tourists.
After our tour we were free to explore the museum part of the building which took us through the history of Cadbury chocolate making. Here we are sampling one of the raw cocoa beans..
And hoping to catch a ride in the Cadbury car!
The final stop was the gift shop where we picked up chocolate to take home with us. Then, we boarded the bus to explore the rest of Dunedin. On the way out we each received a giant Cadbury chocolate bar as a parting gift. It was awesome!
After visiting Cadbury we took a scenic tour of Dunedin. One of the highlights was the old railroad station, where we stopped to explore for a while. Overall this was a pretty sleepy town. Most of the towns in NZ are quite small in terms of population. The entire country only has around 4 million people (crazy if you compare that to the population of just Manhattan!) and you can go through huge stretches of pretty much unpopulated areas. Part of this is due to the fact that it is literally in the middle of nowhere. The closest neighbors are Australia and Antarctica and both are a considerable distance away. The country is incredibly beautiful though and part of the appeal is that it is not crowded or overpopulated.
Notice my lovely new Cadbury visor? I wore purple that day in honor of our Cadbury visit. :-) We had a great day in the quiet town of Dunedin and had our chocolate fix for the rest of the trip.
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