Scottishness, beer and penguins!

Trip Start Dec 20, 2004
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Trip End Sep 2005


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Sunday, December 12, 2004

Hideous drive over to Dunedin - very heavy rain and very low cloud all the way - definately approaching Scotland country! It was very weird driving into Dunedin and passing the road signs ofr Corstorphine, Mussleburgh and Portobello! We had a lovely YHA in Dunedin, a very old building with loads of wood panelling and big old doors, I really felt like I was back at school camp it was great! First things first we headed off to the Speight's brewery to find out how 'the pride of the South' - Speight's beer was made (nothing at all to do with the free samples given out after the tour!). It was actually fantastic and I learned things about beer that I never would have guessed! David and I followed that up the following day with a trip round the Cadbury's factory( again nothing to do with the copious free samples!). Actually we couldn't eat any of our freebies for ages afterwards (at least half an hour!) because the factory smells so sickly sweet you swear you will never eat chocolate again Albatross from afar!
Albatross from afar!
 ! Very interesting though and I got to see my favourites being made - King Size Crunchies!
The best event of Dunedin though was our trip to the penguin colonies. Not only did we get to see loads of the very rare yellow eyed penguins, swimming up to the beach then waddling up some very high hills (often standing next to sheep just having a quick preen - very weird, where is the snow and polar bears?!), we also go to see their babies, who are the same size, just very very fluffy! Also on the trip, we saw colonies of seals and their less than 24 hour old babies (sooooooo cute!), sealions (which we actually stood next to and they STINK!), baby seagulls and then an albatross colony! The albatross'
were amazing, although we could only see them from a distance, they are very impressive with their wing span reaching up to 3.4 meters - the biggest of ANY bird and man are they magestic. This trip was sooooo amazing I'm sure this entry will not do it justice.
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