Golden tickets
We really did see a lot in New Zealand. We saw mountains and waterfalls. We saw goldtowns and giant rocks. But one of the most memorable parts of our trip, honestly, was Cadbury World. That’s right. The people that make the cream eggs have a world in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Even though the sign outside told us we needed to call ahead for reservations, we walked in and gave it a go. As luck would have it, there were two spots left on the tour leaving 5 minutes later. Awesomeness! We paid our $20, unsure if we’d really get that much out of the tour, but slightly giddy from all of the sparkliness and chocolate around us.
The first thing we did was walk through a series of displays – vignettes showing the history of chocolate. When we entered, we took a couple of cacao beans from a basket and began nibbling. Krista made a face and handed me hers. I happily chomped away at the bitter beans, imagining them combined with cream and sugar and spices.
Before we’d seen much of the display we heard an announcement for the tour to gather. The tour kicked off with a mandatory screening of a safety video/history lesson. In addition to the video, we all received hairnets – super hot – and plastic bags containing one chocolate bar: a “Chocolate Fish.â€
Once we had our hairnets in place,
our tour guide, dressed in purple overalls, took our cameras, phones, hats and everything else that wasn’t attached to our bodies – except for the baggies.
“You will need these bags once we’re inside,†she told us. This is a competition. “Let’s see who can collect the most chocolate by the end of the tour.â€
Excuse me, what? Krista and I looked at each other with our mouths hanging open. A competition? For chocolate?
(For those of you who may not know, there are a few things held sacrosanct in the lesbian world. Softball is up there. Our pets, which we treat as children, rank as well. But at the top are two things above all else. Competition. And chocolate.)
I honestly didn’t notice that the entire rest of the tour, probably 20 other people, was made up of families and children, until somewhere near the end of the tour. Krista and I were the only interlopers in this family-friendly scenario. And we had just been baited beyond belief by our tour guide.
She led us through the actual, working factory, stopping every so often to show us another video and tell us about what we were seeing. “That palate there is one ton of chocolate heading to commercial customers.â€Â “Those pipes overhead are carrying chocolate. Red is dark, blue is white, yellow is milk.â€Â “We keep our chocolate in liquid form in the factory.â€Â “You should never refrigerate chocolate.â€
Then she would put her hands in her pockets full of little chocolate bars, and start quizzing us. “What color pipe carries the dark chocolate?â€Â “What other industries use cocoa butter?†“Where does our sugar come from?â€
I’m unsure if I physically blocked any children from receiving chocolate, but I do know that parents began participating in the little trivia sessions. Parents, who will usually prod their children forward, whispering answers in their ears, began yelling out answers trying to beat Krista and me to the chocolate. And I had planned to hold back. I really had. But the words of our tour guide rang in my ears, “it’s a competition…it’s a competition…it’s a competition…for chocolate.â€
“Red! Cosmetics! Queensland!â€
Some of the rooms had displays of different products. Cadbury sells all over the world, and most of the products in New Zealand and Australia are things I’d never seen in America. So I’d rush over to the products, studying the packaging, the flavors, and the colors. Soon, I was beating the native kiwis to the answers before the questions were finished.
At a certain point, the tour guide clearly had enough of me. Pretending that she couldn’t hear my voice, she’d ignore my answers, which were obviously first, favoring anybody else. So, I had to resort to trickery. Sometimes, I’d stand to her side, just out of her vision, so that she’d hand over the little bars of approval before she saw it was me. Other times, Krista would tag-team, hearing my answer and bouncing it forward to collect the chocolate.
Eventually our guide resorted to “kids only†questions. Which worked for Krista and me, but not so well for the dads, who were now totally worked up and in full competition mode.
Here’s another thing about lesbians: we’re usually pretty good about rules. We want to know them so we can decide what to do with them. And I generally obey rules. So I backed off. But I knew all the answers. Sometimes I’d whisper them to the kids so they could beat their parents, who were unable to control themselves now that they were competing, too.
And, as if the chocolate and trivia weren’t enough, the tour itself was really great. We saw a lot of the process. We saw white chocolate being squirted out into chips, and huge milk chocolate ingots being removed from molds.  We climbed into a pitch-black silo, and watched as a floodlight illuminated a 1-ton milk chocolate “waterfall†spilling out before us. And, at the end of it all, we piled into a little, warm room to receive shot glasses of molten chocolate fresh out of the pipes.
And then, we counted. “Who has the most?†our tour guide asked, scanning all of our bags. “Oh, well, you. You have a lot.†She said, pointing at my bag. “And you,†she said pointing at Krista. We grinned and clutched our prizes. When she reached the kids, she dug her hands into the depths of her overalls and emerged with handfuls of shiny treats for all of them. Like a grandmother making sure everyone had the same number of m&ms, she evened out the bags of chocolate and sent us on our way to take pictures in the old-fashioned Cadbury milk truck.
Back in our van, Krista and I dumped our bags onto the dash to evaluate our haul. It was kind of like Halloween for adults.
We ended up with a lot of chocolate. Which we immediately began bartering. It was a beautiful thing. She didn’t want the marshmallow, I didn’t want the gluten. In the two-hour tour, we had collected enough chocolate to take us through the last week of our trip. And we won. It was hard to say which was better.
January 28, 2011 2 Comments