Today we were back on the road, starting the last leg of our journey. Our trip to Queenstown starts our trek north up the west coast of the South Island. On our way to Queenstown, we mixed in a few stops to break up the trip including a slight detour to the Catlins, which is near the southern-most point of the South Island. The area is called Nugget Point and is famous for a few different things including…a lighthouse! Better yet, it’s also one of the few areas where fur seals, sea lions, and elephant seals all cohabitate. We were hoping to see something good and we hit the jackpot! The lighthouse played second fiddle to almost a dozen fur seals, a few sea lions, and a small group of elephant seals. Very cool. They were ... read more

We left Lake Tekapo fairly early and headed toward the East Coast. We drove down to a city called Oamaru. This is where the little blue penguins come ashore each day at dusk. Unfortunately, we got there around lunch-time and were way too early for that as well as the afternoon nesting tour so we were off. We did take a walk on a nice beach where you can sometimes see Yellow-Eyed Penguins but, no joy there either, except for the view. We drove on down the coast and stopped at the Moeraki Boulders. These rocks were formed in the ocean over 60 million years ago. They are round (see the pic) because they formed in layers, like an oyster pearl, covering over bone, or fossil or piece of wood. According to Maori legend, these are ... read more

This was our Sea Safari day. We hit the open ocean in search of whales off the coast. We boarded our specially modified whale watch vessel and headed about 4 miles offshore. Specially modified means you can seat a lot of tourists and hold a lot of sea-sick bags. About a mile off the coast, there’s a continental shelf (cliff) that drops from about 200 ft to just under 4,000 ft. The boat had a display that showed up where we were, the depth, etc. As we made our way out, the crew gave us a short lecture on the different animals in the area. It would have been better, but she had to keep waiting for the French interpreter. About 70% of the people on board were French, and a bit pushy. Oui, oui! The ... read more

After a nice break yesterday (Brian watched New Zealand win the Semifinal in the Ladies Netball Championship on TV), we set out for one last excursion in the North Island. From Wellington, we headed southeast to the southern-most point of the North Island (did you follow that?) The area is called Cape Palliser. It’s claim to fame is that it has a lighthouse with 250 steps to get to it. (Yes, Amy loves those lighthouses! Some smarty-pants girl on one of our tours made a snarky comment that if you’ve seen one lighthouse, you’ve seen them all. One of us strongly disagrees with her. The other thought she was kind of cute.) We can’t really verify how many steps for sure since we lost count due to lack of oxygen. A very pretty view, but nothing ... read more

Today we said goodbye to Rotorua and our great hosts, Lynday and Graham (and their cat Bootsie). They really made our stay a lot of fun and very enjoyable. As we made our way to Wellington (about 6.5 hours south), we saw a few sights along the way. We got lucky with our timing on our first stop because they open up a dam each morning at 1000 that floods the Aratiatia rapids. This is done to generate power and has become a tourist attraction for jetboating and kayaking. We drove up just as the gate was opening. A little way down the road, is a small waterfall called Huka Falls. A nice photo op, and then we were on our way. Amy wanted to stop to look at a local honey café and all we ... read more