The only traffic jam in Dunedin

Friday was the big event that causes the only traffic jam every year in Dunedin. A friend of mine sat in her car for an HOUR in traffic on North Road right near our house. This is in a town where you can drive from one side to the other, even at rush hour, in 15 minutes. The big event is the Jaffa race. "Jaffa" is the name of an orange flavored chocolate candy made by Cadbury, which has a big plant right here in Dunedin. 30,000 Jaffas were rolled down Baldwin Street, billed as the steepest street in the world. It's about five blocks from our house. People were able to purchase Jaffas for $2, and each of the purchased ones had numbers on them. The one that rolled down the street fastest earned a $1000 gift certificate for the person who bought it.

Here's the article in our local newspaper about it:
http://www.odt.co.nz/your-town/dunedin/13289/red-tide-rolls-down-street

And here's a video of it. The 30,000 candies are rolled about 2 minutes into the video.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/65852/video-jaffa-race-dunedin

I was sitting in a restaurant with my writer's group right on North Road at the time of the event. Large numbers of people were flooding past the restaurant on foot the whole time we were there.

Port Chalmers and flax

Saturday at noon it was sunny but a storm was supposed to come in that evening, so Dave and I decided to take a little outing before the weather fell apart. We drove to Port Chalmers, which is about halfway down the Otago Harbour from Dunedin. It takes only about 15 minutes to drive there. We went up to a lookout point. From there, you can see the Port Chalmers is the container port for Dunedin. A lot of wood products -- wood chips and logs -- are shipped from there as well.

The lookout point has a sculpture garden nearby. This next photo shows the sculpture I like best.

The next photo shows the view across the harbour. Also notice the wide leafed plants behind and in front of Dave. They're New Zealand flax.

New Zealand flax is not related to the plant called "flax" in the Northern Hemisphere. This flax is native to New Zealand and was used by Maori for all kinds of things, such as clothing, baskets, rope, fishing nets, bird snares, mats, and cooking baskets. Maori recognized 60 varieties and had flax nurseries where they grew the various varieties. The scupture garden had quite a few varieties of flax, which I photographed. The first one has the remains of flower stalks from summer.

Across the harbor from Port Chalmers is the odd hill called the Harbour Cone. It looks so much like something from Lord of the Rings. I always expect a hobbit to come walking by when I see it.

From the sculpture garden, we could see Mount Cargill, the highest point around Dunedin. I've taken pictures from the top of Mount Cargill (see the post from March 23, 2008, some of the later pictures in the post). It's the hill with the tower on it in the far distance in the photo below.

Here's a close up of Mount Cargill, and the last photo is a closeup of the hills to the left of Mount Cargill. They're such typical South Island hills, with fields delineated by hedges.

money in New Zealand

While visiting in the U.S., I was struck by the difference in the money between the U.S. and New Zealand. New Zealand money is brightly colored. One side of the bills has native birds and the other side has people. But the biggest shock in returning to the U.S. was realizing that I had gotten used to life without pennies and nickels. The smallest coin in New Zealand is the ten cent coin. When paying cash, all prices are rounded up or down to the nearest ten cents. When paying by debit, the exact price in cents is debited from one's bank account. While in the U.S., carrying around all those pennies seemed so silly. I've read that Americans are sentimental about pennies and are not at all willing to get rid of them, even though it would save a lot of money not to have them in circulation. So here's a look at money in New Zealand.

Those coins are a two dollar coin, a one dollar coin, and then coins for fifty, twenty and ten cents. The bills are get slightly smaller as the amounts get smaller. Here's a view of the people on the bills, with the size decreases visible. (The poeple are Lord Rutherford of Nelson, Sir Aparama Ngata, Queen Elizabeth, Kate Sheppard, and Sir Edmund Hillary.)

The exchange rate between the New Zealand dollar and the U.S. dollar has fluctuated wildly in the two years we've been here. The New Zealand dollar is the fifth most widely traded currency in the world, because the interest rates here have historically been among the highest in the developed world. Since we've been there, the highest exchange rate was the New Zealand dollar being worth about 80 U.S. cents, and the lowest was just under fifty cents.

snowy mountains by Christchurch

I flew back to New Zealand from the US a couple days ago. My flight from Los Angeles to Auckland was an hour and a half late, so I missed the non-stop flight from Auckland to Dunedin that I'd been scheduled to take. So I had to change planes in Christchurch. I was so surprised by the snowy mountains I could see form the Chch airport, so I took some pictures of them. You may remember my earlier posts about the fact that Christchurch is located in the middle of the Canterbury plain, a long plain that reaches its widest point at Christchurch. The plain is bordered to the east by the ocean and to the west by mountains. The airport at Chch is located to the west of the town, so it's closer to the mountains than the rest of the city. I'd heard that the South Island had had some cold weather in my absence, and the snow in the mountains makes that evident.