Twizel and Geraldine. Lost these pictures too.

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On the 19th we left Dunedin and headed for Twizel for more views of Mt. Cook. We travelled up the East coast for a while, before heading inland through Mackenzie country. Along the coast we stopped at Shag Point, which is know for its seal and penguin colonies. Yes more seals and penguins is what we thought but it was a good thing we stopped. We got the closest to the seals here then in anyother place we saw them. They were all over the rocks below the cliffs we were walking along and in some places they were only 5m or less away from us. They're really not very active animals when they're on the rocks, one seal would move 2 hops then lie down again for 5 minutes then do the same thing again. It is a shame we lost these pictures because we had the best pictures of the seals. We didn't see any penguins at this place, but that was because we were there to early in the day to see them.

Along the coast we also stopped at the Moeraki boulders, these are almost perfactly round boulders that are only found on one beach in NZ. Scientists think that they are formed from ancient sea floor sediments, and this old sea floor forms the cliffs that now line the beach. As the cliffs are washed away the boulders emerge. They can way up to 3 tons and preserved skeletons of turtles have been found inside them.

Once turning off the coast we headed inland in a northwest direction towards Twizel. The road followed the Waitaki River and had 3 power dams built along it. The land when we first turned off the coast was irrigated farmland, but the closer we got to Twizel the land got dryer and became sheep country. The hills also got bigger, which isn't really much of a surprise considering we were getting closer to the Southern Alps again.

For our one night in Twizel we camped again, and once we'd set up camp we headed to Lake Pukaki to see the views of Mt. Cook. Unfortunately it was pretty hazy so we couldn't get any nice pictures. For any Lord of the Rings fans, Twizel was used to film the biggest fight scene in the trilogy, The Return of the King. Twizel was used because it was a small town so shutting it down for a month was really that big of a deal. On the days of filming there would be up to 1500 extras and crew running around filming the big battle. There is nothing of the film left in the area because it was private land, but if you know the movie and know the scene there is things you can pick out. After this we headed back to camp for the night.

On the 20th we left Twizel and headed to Geraldine. On the way we tried again for pictures of Mt. Cook, but it was still too hazy to get pictures. On the way to Geraldine we stopped at Lake Tekapo to see the Church of the Good Shepherd and a statue of a Collie dog. We're not really sure why the church is so important because when we stopped there was 5 other tourists buses pull up at the same time. There was freaking tourists everywhere. Who'd have thought a small stone church in the middle of nowhere would be so popular. The statue of the dog was a tribute to the dogs that helped the farmers farm the land.

After the people scared us off we drove to Fairlie for lunch and took some photos of a famous statue of Mackenzie and his dog. Mackenzie is famous for being the first white guy to see the land that is now named after him. Once finding this area he used it to his advantage by stealing sheep and hiding them there because nobody else knew about this land. He eventually got caught when he stole 1000 sheep from the richest man in the area. He escaped from jail, was caught again and escaped again. Eventually he was released, only in NZ would a criminal be a folk hero!

Geraldine is only 40mins from Fairlie, so I left Dave up to his own devices to get us there while I read a magazine. When I looked up 40 mins later we were on the wrong road and were south of Geraldine. Luckly for him though we weren't to far away and were able to double back without going too much out of the way. He did get bugged about that for the rest of the day!

Once arriving in Geraldine we went to the Vintage Car and Machinery Museum and tried not to melt in the 37 degree weather. There were some nice old cars that had been fixed up and were in perfect working condition, a lot of machinery needed work though. Our main reason for stopping in Geraldine was to break up the trip back to the east coast, so after the museum we didn't do much else.

On the 21st we headed back to the east coast and were going to stop for the night in Waipara because their is an old steam train that still runs there. We discovered that the train only runs on the weekends and it was the middle of the week!! So we decided to continue on to Kaikoura and spend 3 days there instead of only 2.

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