The beautiful, rolling hills of Dunedin. These hills are very typical of New Zealand, although generally they don't have cities sitting behind them. Dunedin was first settled in 1848, when several ships arrived from Scotland. The first settlers are generously portrayed in the "First Settlement Museum" which has photographs of most of the original settlers. Apparently they decided at some point they wanted a lasting record of the settlement so they all lined up and had their portraits taken. Each portrait contains the name of the boat that the subject came over on. From the museum I went to admire the beautiful, rolling hills of chocolate in the Cadbury factory. The conglomerate is Cadbury-Schweppes-Burton (Burton was a Dunedin Biscuit and chocolate maker who eventually merged with the others). I believe that all the fine chocolates are made elsewhere. This factory made common sweets, chocolate covered biscuits, and milky-way type candy bars (Moro), the best selling sweet in New Zealand. The woman who gave the tour didn't talk loudly enough to be understood. While we were on the tour, two separate assembly-lines became jammed and had to be stopped. There was plenty of room for improvement in their process.

I stayed at the local youth hostel (despite the fact that I'm not a YHA member), which was a very nice place. I met a great Canadian guy from Denman Island (pop. 500). They seem to have a fairly advanced alternative lifestyle, although Robert was probably one of the leaders of the "alternative" movement, it seems that much of the island is just locals. We talked of this, scuba diving, isolation chambers, social situation in NZ and many other things. It was the most enjoyable talk I've had during my trip. He was what many people call a "bum" not accepting any long-term responsibilities, but he was very well read and was basically a jack-of-all-trades. He could pick up some sort of job whereever he went -- seemed like a very self-sufficient guy. He said he was hoping to go teach English in Japan...made me think about the myopic view of keeping a single job.