Final Friday

Today we drove down closer to Christchurch and chose a nice little campsite beside the sea. In fact we have a sea view from our camper window. It’s a lazy day today, walking on the beach and relaxing and looking out onto our see view.

We fly back to Auckland tomorrow.

Having a Whale of a Time!

Guess what we did on Thursday, went on a trip to find whales. The weather was perfect. The sun was shining, clear blue skies and there was little if any breeze, so the sea was very calm.
We were out at sea for about 2 hours and in that time saw one Sperm Whale surface for about 12 minutes and then go under flipping his tail before submersing back under the sea.

We also saw a small pod of Dolphins which we only saw from afar and I was quite disappointed at not going closer to see them. Thankfully I kept my thoughts to myself because you can imagine our amazement when we saw dozens of Dolphins in the pod that our skipper was searching for. They even put on an aerial show for us. Show-offs!

 

Weary Wednesday

Good morning from the Otago Peninsula

 

 

Our next destination was Kaikoura, about one and a half hours north of Christchurch, so that was about a five hour journey ahead of us. We stopped in Christchurch to fill up with fuel and then on our way again. So it was a very weary Wednesday. Most of the roads have been straight in South Island but this journey was very windy for over an hour and some up steep high hills. We found a nice campsite where we planned to stay for a couple of nights. Well at least we thought it was nice at first. It was beside a railway line and the trains were very noisy for the first night but I think we were so tired on the second night we would have slept through anything.

Albatross Adventures

Like I said earlier we were only about an hour away from Dunedin which was our destination for the day. Otago Peninsular, Dunedin is where we are hoping to see an Albatross and maybe penguins. Our first visit was on the Albatross tour, the guide Christine gave a very informative presentation before we were lead up the cliff to see three Albatross chicks. We were told we may see another Albatross flying in but that didn’t happen. The chicks were cute though.

 

Elder Saunders had a little rest in our camper while I went for a stroll near the cliffs. Imagine my delight when I saw two albatrosses’ flying around. I videoed them so I could show them to Elder Saunders later but luckily for him one came out for a fly by when he got up. They are so big and glide majestically around the sky. I was told that they would have been the juvenile Albatrosses’ showing off because the parents of the chicks would have just flown in to feed their young.
We had a free hot chocolate, curtesy of a magazine we picked up at the airport, before making our day complete on the Penguin search.
We had to wait until dusk before we made our way down to the specially built platform on the beach. We must have waited for about an hour before we heard the calls of both the penguins out at sea and the ones left behind on the shore because it was the moulting season.

It was delightful to see these little blue penguins come out of the water then curiously coming up the beach. There was infrared spotlighting just in front of the platform so that we could clearly see them. One even come just in front of where we were standing and made himself at home there. Others waddled up just beside the platform. Hopefully my photos will show just how close they came.  One lonely penguin came to the shoreline about half an hour later but kept going back into the water. Then we could hear calls from another penguin on the right hand side of the beach so that little lonely penguin swam back into the sea and climbed out onto the rocks on the right hand side of the beach.  It was quite dark on the rocks but we could still just make out his trek across the rocks. About another half an hour later our guide said we would be finishing in about 5 minutes and just as our 5 minutes were up another two penguins came out from their day long fishing adventure. That again was very cute to watch. They very slowly waddled up across the sand looking all around them and then right past the platform. What an exciting end to our day. Now to find somewhere to camp for the night.

Milford Sound

Monday morning we were up very early and decided to leave the campsite immediately and head for Milford Sound which was just under an hour away. We were up very high and could even see snow on the mountains. After going through Homer Tunnel the road was very high up and windy. Not windy as in wind but windy as in going around bends.  I don’t like heights so I just focused on the inside of the road. Thankfully the high and windy bit of the road was not that long. When we arrived at Milford Sound we had our breakfast while watching our first wild Kea playing in the car park.

 

The boat trip was at 10.30 which gave us plenty of time to look around.

 

 

We were told about a strange looking boat which we could see across the sound. It was an Alien space vessel. Actually that’s the truth. It is part of a film set that they are shooting for one of the Alien series of movies. They even had an helicopter move equipment from another area to the set.

 

We chose to go on a Nature Cruise, so had lots of commentary on board telling us about the sea life, plants and mountains. Milford Sound is incorrectly named as it is a Fiord but the early English settlers were used to calling their sea inlets Sounds so that why it is called a Sound. We saw many Fur Seals even a few having squabbles over who was the boss. Again the weather was perfect sunny and the sea calm. We did venture right out to the Tasman Sea. On our way back we even went under a waterfall. Those who were brave enough went outside and got a little wet. Elder Saunders stayed inside but I did go outside and I thought that I had even filmed it but again I press the record button at the wrong time and only got us coming out of it. It was refreshing, cold and fun.

Can you see the Fur Seals behind us? 





 

Can you see the rainbow effect on these waterfalls

 

 

This is the water fall I went under.

 

 

We also went inside a floating sealife observatory. That was very interesting. What we saw was totally natural and anything could have happened. Sadly nothing exciting did but we did see a few  unusual fish.

We were on our travels again and aimed to get as close to Dunedin as possible in fact we ended up about an hour away from Dunedin and only stopped because it was getting dark. Coincidently the place was called Milton.

On route though we did see an interesting cycle.

Sabbath

We stayed another night at Queenstown then on Sunday morning we went to church in Frankton. The weather this morning was miserable and wet. But I'm sure it will clear later. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before but Elder Saunders has a few nicknames and one of them is Mr Sunshine. So it was no surprise to me that during the church service the sun came out and it was sunny for the rest of the day. Frankton Branch is very small but the members are lovely and we had a spiritually uplifting sacrement meeting and lessons. Plus they have two missionaries there. Both of them are from South Africa and one of them knows our Elder Van Thiel. So we enjoyed talking to them both. I think they were both amused with our camper, I wonder why???

We carried on with our travels after church towards Milford Sound and parked at the last conservation campsite before entering onto the narrow roads and tunnel. The campsite was massive and you had to find your own spot to camp which was easy to do.  It soon got very very dark and it was just as well our camper had its own facilities as their was only one portable toilet and that was a long way from where we choose to camp. It was also very quiet there so we had a good nights sleep.

Queenstown Cruise

On Saturday we looked around Queenstown market before going on a boat cruise down the lake. We could have paid extra and had a tour of a sheep farm or had a meal in the tavern across the lake but we choose to just relax on the cruise. We did see the steamship Earnslaw on the lake. It is over 100 years old and the same age as the Titanic.