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Published: October 24th 2008
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Sunrise in the Doubtful Sounds
We were woken up early to see the sunrise, but it was worth it. Continued...
(We're in a gaming internet cafe at the moment as it was the only one we could find, and there are people shouting to kill this person and that...its actually quite distracting!) Anyway...
After the buzz of Queenstown, we had a relaxing day in Te Anau walking around the lake and just lazing about and then drove onto Manapouri to get on our boat for an overnight tour of the Doubtful Sounds. The tour was amazing. It was a little rainy, especially when we went kayaking, but was beautifiul and so untouched. When it got to night time it was completely dark outside. The clouds covered the moon and any stars, and there was no one for miles around...so it was literally pitch black. Thinking about it I don't think i've ever been somewhere where it was completely pitch black outside. The morning sunrise was also quite magical, with the clouds sleeping within the valleys of the mountains where the glaciers used to be. I think we took quite a few photos...(a few which we have attached). The boat was also the first night here that we haven't slept in our camper. It was nice to bit a
bit warmer, but it was good to find Bijou safe and where we left her when we got back to Manapouri. With a deadline of a flight out of Christchurch in a few days we needed to cover some mileage, and so foot on the accelerator and full speed ahead (50mph- woohoo!) we sped towards Dunedin.
Now, we imagined Dunedin (which apparently is Gaellic for Edinburgh) as being slightly different to what it actually was. For some reason, based on the guide books description I imagined the place to be..well like a NZ version of Edinburgh. But in fact we just found it a bit odd. It just seemed that the castle (the only one in NZ apparently) and kilt shops were out of place and the city just seemed a bit less friendly than the other ones we had encountered. A highlight of Dunedin was a visit to the steepest road in the world! We didn't dare drive our camper up there with fear of rolling down backwards, but the walk up there was quite challenging!
On our next day we visited the Otago Peninsula just off Dunedin. The drive was amazing, helped by the fact that
it was a glorious sunny day, winding through the hills with the views of the sea and Dunedin below. The highlights of the peninsula was the royal albratros which we were lucky to actually see flying as the centre was closed due to breeding, and the yellow penguins that we went on a tour to see.
Next stop on the way back up to Christchurch was Moeraki to see the Moeraki boulders. These are large circular boulders in the sea which offer some more good photo opportunities. Unfortunately the information centre was closed when we arrived so i don't actually know how they were formed, but they look impressive! We stayed a night in Moeraki which was quite fun as it is a small little village. We managed to cook a delicious barbeque (despite gale force winds and sea gulls actually flying down to try and grab the chicken) and then found this cute little bar with a country singer.
Onwards, we headed towards to Lake Tekapo. This was slightly out of our way, but worth the drive as the lake is an amazing blue colour (from the glaciers) and just beautiful really. We did a star gazing
tour at the observatory nearby in the evening which was amazing. There were hundreds of stars, but with the guide there he pointed out that two of them were actually Venus and Jupiter! We looked at Jupiter through the telescope and you could actually see its four moons and Jupiter's stripes. That night at the campsite however, was the coldest we've been in our camper. We actually had to grab our hoodies in the middle of the night and sleep in them!
After lake Tekapo our next and final stop in our camper was Christchurch. We didn't really do much in Christchurch...we took a tour on the old tram, saw some kiwis (well we think they were really kiwis...we were taken to a dark room as they are only awake at night and told that this furry still thing was a kiwi) and just visited the usual tourist places.
And finally that brings us up to date (I don't think we'll leave the blog entry so long next time as this has taken us hours to write!). After an emotional farewell to Bijou, we took a flight from Christchurch to Auckland to spend a few days here before
heading to Fiji to top up the tan. We've visited some museums here- the maritime museum, the Kelly Tarlton Antartic museum, both of which were fun and then now hoping to go up the Sky tower. Not bungey jumping off though!
I'm off to have a go at one of these online games now...
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