Glaciers and Pancakes...
Well, this was me in Dunedin! I made a friend, a Taiwanese girl who was looking a little lost in the street, and we decided to go and see if we could find the Albatrosses and penguins! Picture above is me comparing my wing span to that of an albatross, so you can see how hefty the old birds are...! (average wingspan of 3 metres)
And here is my picture of one! You may not be that impressed, but with a bit of a zoom you can see them there, I think there are 2 of them. You could tell they weren't seagulls because they don't really flap their wings, just glide along in the wind...it was pretty cool to see.
I was lucky enough to meet some more sealions on 'Sandfly Bay', just by Dunedin...you've got to love the sealions!
What I was looking for though were the 'Yellow Eyed Penguins' - they come up and nest along the east coast of New Zealand and in the evenings you can see them hopping to shore, which is where I saw these guys (its a bit blurry, but you get the idea).
This was a sign I saw in Oamaru, just north of Dunedin.
From Oamaru, on the east coast, I drove through the middle, to the west coast and got to drive through snow, frost, sun, rain - all the different weathers, loved it. Here are a couple of pics from the journey.
On one bit of road on the west coast, just before you get to the glaciers, there was a stretch where people wrote messages on stones along the roadside...I added my piece, although didn't have the handy marker pen on me that lots of other people seem to have had on their person...
There are over 3000 glaciers in New Zealand, but two of the biggest and most famous ones are the Fox Glacier, and Franz Josef, these are both on the west coast of the South Island. You can walk up to the base of both of them, which I did, but if you want to walk on them you have to go on a guided tour, or take a helicopter ride...I went for the latter option which I was quite excited about, having never been in a helicopter before! Here are a couple of pics I took from the air...
I had only paid for 20 mins (the cheapest option), but I got upgraded because everyone else had paid for 30 mins, so 10 extra mins for me...these could have been the extra minutes that tipped me over the edge and made the nausea kick in, but either way, enjoyed my first helicopter flight! It was a great sunny day for it too!
Here's my shadow waving at Peter's Pool (near Franz Josef glacier).
Sunset at Hokitika (just south of Greymouth)
I spent a night in Punakaiki, just north of Greymouth, to see the 'Pancake Rocks', so named because apparently they look like stacks of pancakes...I have to admit, a lot of imagination is needed to get the pancake thing. They are some kind of geological mystery as no-one really knows why they have formed the layers.
I am now in Greymouth, where I have dropped the car off this morning (pleased they didn't make me wash it...)
Tomorrow I get a bus to Nelson and then in a couple of days a ferry to the North Island to spend a couple of weeks there before my next flight...having fun in New Zealand and enjoying the scenery, pretty much the whole of New Zealand was featured in Lord of the Rings somehwere...
So were you vomiting in the helicopter?
No sick, sorry Christine, was dangerously close though! Managed to hold it in.
Wow what a great write up on New Zealand! That is my next place to conquer and i am looking forward to it. I will update you when i return. You may check my blog at Chronicle of a Jet-Setter