Rolling Thousands of Candies Down the Steepest Street in the World

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Baldwin Street is the steepest residential street in the world. And yup, it is really steep. We didn't even attempt to drive Binney up it, but we did make Dexter run up and down a few times. :)

World's Steepest Street!

That person is breaking the "no turning" rule! Though he's not at the super step part yet

There are actually stairs on the steepest bit, beyond the drop off

Dexter finds it difficult to sit, haha.

Running up and down is tiring!

As part of the Cadbury Chocolate Festival, 25000 Jaffas (another unique NZ treat - chocolate balls covered in candy-coating) are raced down Baldwin Street (actually 50000 in total, split between 2 races). It's a fundraising event, and each jaffa costs $1 to enter. Sadly none of our 10 jaffas won. :(

The event was neat because it was so ridiculous, but the race itself was actually pretty anticlimactic. 25000 seems like it would be lots of jaffas, but from our position at the bottom of the street the candies were barely visible. We were both expecting a tidal wave of candy. Many of the jaffas got stuck on the way down, so guys with brooms had to come out and sweep them all up, it was pretty funny. Also they kept saying how the   brooms had all been disinfected, and also the street was disinfected prior to the race. Implying that these jaffas were going to be eaten by somebody? There were a lot of eagar children holding out bags at the end, but we didn't stick around to find out what actually happened with the candies.

It was fun to witness this very NZ event :) The website has some more dramatic pics, but here are ours.

Waiting for the jaffas!

Here they come... see the faint orange section of the street?

Race #2 had special black and white jaffas (which almost no one had seen ever!) for the NZ Olympic team!