Cadbury Factory
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Dunedin,
New Zealand
Thursday, October 25, 2007
After the first week or two, we had settled quite nicely into an on-road routine, with me in charge of driving and whistling, and Sinead looking after navigating and Wild Bean spotting.
Wild Bean is a chain of cafes sitting in BP forecourts across New Zealand and Marge and I had become proud owners of a customer loyalty card due to our addiction-feeding habit of stopping for a flat white at every opportunity. At this juncture, I'd like to take you behind the scenes of NZ coffee culture...follow me if you will...
NZ is known worldwide for it's fine wool, it's small hairy fruit and it's love of rugby, but I hadn't been ready for how much they love their coffee. Every cafe claims to serve the regions/countries/worlds best coffee, and in some of the places I visited I might just have agreed with them. Universally, when you ask for a coffee you were handed a freshly roasted and ground concoction with the milk heated and foamed to perfection. And although the rest of the world makes do with a latte or cappuccino, NZ likes to go one louder with a flat white. Ostensibly a latte with less foam, it also boasts an extra shot of espresso and this little addition makes it one of the most potent driving aids known to man. A large Wild Bean flat white has got to contain more caffeine than Costa Rica exports on an annual basis and they are fiendishly easily available, cheap and oh so tasty.
The ritual of driving around with the van running on petrol fumes while we watched and waited for a BP garage with a Wild Bean attached quickly became routine, and as it did, so too did our habit of not properly engaging in conversation until we'd been Beaned. Marge's withdrawal symptoms included being unable to accurately tune the radio, and this only set my teeth even more on edge as I had simultaneously become addicted to Radio Hauraki - the station whose tag line boasts 'Classic Rock - that ROCKS'. (check out www.hauraki.co.nz for the stream) If I didn't get an early morning mix of Bowie/Doors/CCR, I was apt to stop whistling....and that was bad news indeed.
Anyhoo, caffeine addictions and rock'n'roll radio aside, the road continued to open up to us and deliver it's delights in abundance. We had made it down through Wellington, where we'd stopped for a few days to visit with one of Marges friends from the "Old Country", Orla and her husband-to-be, Ken. A relaxing few days, a visit to an amazing museum (Te Papa Museum, which boasts earthquake simulators, corrugated iron cars and loads of Maori junk)and then onto the ferry. Over the water on the south island, we started getting close to nature with ducks aplenty at every campsite we stopped at, seal watching along the coast to Kaikora, and an incredible array of dead bugs on our windshield. After numerous stops in cute, small coastal towns we finally arrived in Christchurch. This 'most English of cities' was actually a little treat of a place to stop and wander around. Clean, compact and with it's very own River Avon running through it, it also has a beautiful town square and a fabulous botanic garden mere minutes walk from the centre. We also had the good fortune to meet up with some other travellers here and hit the town in the hope of 'getting pissed and going dancing' which is Marges all-too-seldom-used battlecry.
After a few days floating around Christchurch and eating at one of Sinead's landmark restaurants - Under the red Veranda, we headed down towards Dunedin to stay with my cousin Johnny and his family. Johnny, his wife Nikki (who is a Kiwi) and their 3 kids moved over to NZ from London 2 years ago and have settled into the hilliest town I've ever come across - it beats San Francisco hands down and apparently has the worlds steepest street (which it was customary for students to fly down in a wheelie bin). The last time I'd seen Johnny was when I went over to visit his family in London sometime before my 15th birthday. One legendary Saturday, Johnny (19ish himself) took me out to meet some of his mates, brought me out to Anfield for an Arsenal home game and then proceeded to get me absolutely pissed. Falling asleep on the train home that night, I worked out that I had matched Johnny glass for pint (ie every time he had a pint, I had a half), and in the process consumed the best part of 10 pints. Which wasn't, as I'm sure you'll agree; bad for a 14 year old.
Johnny now takes slightly less than 20 pints on an average Saturday, but we still managed to have a great time unwinding with him and his family for a few days. We loved their 3 kids, particularly the youngest loony, Jamie, who picked up the habit of diving off the sofa onto me every time I came within diving distance.
I hope he stopped when I left, otherwise I should soon be getting a bill from Johnny for his sons osteopath.
