South South Island and coming up the East coast

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We've done a lot since my last entry, so hopefully I'll manage to remember everything we have done since!

From Queenstown we headed to Te Anau, where we went on a trip to some glow worm caves and trusted some man and a rope with our lives (maybe not, seeing as we can swim!) in some pitch black cave and a boat as he pulled us round and kept bashing the cave walls! We saw lots of glow worms though and had a nice trip on Lake Te Anau. The next day we drove up to Milford Sound, through the Homer Tunnel and then down towards the sound (actually a fjord!). We took a nice trip on the fjord and headed out to sea and back in, sadly we saw no penguins, but we saw some lovely waterfalls, landscape and even a new zealand fur seal before heading back to the hostel in Te Anau.

From Te Anau we headed to Invercargill via the scenic route which would have been very pretty, had it not been foggy! It cleared up just as we hit the south coast and we had some lovely views out to sea and along the cliffs. We wandered round a lighthouse and also hit a kahu (Australasian harrier) as we were driving! They eat roadkill, but always fly away and get out of the way, this one didn't and left some fluff on our wingmirror, its or the roadkill's we don't know or care!

We spent 2 nights at Invercargill in a hostel that was right in the centre. We just rested there, wandered around town, went to the cinema and took a breather, this travelling business can be quite hard work - not sure how many of you will believe that though! Although we wanted to head to Bluff and Stewart Island, Bluff didn't exactly sound the most exciting of places and Stewart Island cost loads to get to on the ferry so we passed on them!

From Invercargill, we took the southern and scenic route to Dunedin. We stayed in an old historic manor house and spent our time wandering round town. We headed out to and walked up Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world, we had our lunch in the botanic gardens, went to the Scottish shop and then spent the evening resting our feet!

From Dunedin, we headed to the Otago Peninsula, wildlife central! We went into the Royal Albatross centre and went on a "tour" - we basically headed out to the observation hut and saw 4 albatross chicks. We were very lucky because we also got to see two adult birds come back and feed their respective young. From there we headed down to Pilot beach, just a little beach where penguins come at dusk and as we were walking along, I suddenly spotted a New Zealand fur seal, about 10m from us just lying on the rocks snoring! We walked up to the edge of the rocks (about 3-4m away) and he didn't even bat an eyelid but we called it a day and didn't dare get any closer! Then we headed to Hooper's Inlet and took a photo before turning round and heading to our hostel, on a yellow-eyed penguin conservation area. We went on a penguin tour and wandered down to a beach and watched a few penguins coming in out of the surf before scurrying along a number of tunnels to follow a penguin that was heading in to his burrow. He (obviously) heard and saw us and then came to investigate so we had a wild yellow-eyed penguin, the rarest in the world coming up to us (within a metre of our faces) to have a look!

Today we drove the long distance from Otago Peninsula to Twizel, via Oamaru and Omarama. We also stopped off to see the Moeraki boulders and Elephant rocks, fairly spectacular rock formations. We're staying the night in a holiday park here and we still don't know what we will do tomorrow! Maybe we'll head up closer to Mount Cook, but we don't really know. We might then spend a night in Lake Tekapo (well not in, but by!) and then go and see Ann and Doug again. From A & D we will head to Hanmer Springs and then on to Kaikoura!

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