Yellow Eyed Penguins and Cadbury Land!!

Yellow Eyed Penguin close up.
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Following a one night stopover in Christchurch to break the journey up, we drove into Dunedin in thick fog and overcast conditions!! Suddenly the fog broke and the city opened up before us scattered over hills, with very few tall buildings spoiling the horizon.

The first day was spent checking in to our hotel (which included a 10 minute presentation on Dunedin's history and a brief plug of the manager's photographical website - not related to the hotel at all!) and just having a wander round the city centre to see what's what. We had a drink in one of the many bars around, and decided to go to the cinema to see the newly released Mr Bean movie. We made a note whilst there to see another newly released New Zealand film (not sure if its hit the shores of the UK yet!) called "Black Sheep" - an odd comedy/horror film about killer sheep...

"Bonnie and Clyde" - the resident breeding penguins.
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The following day we woke up early in order to visit Cadbury World! Despite Lorna working for Cadbury Schwepps for over 6 months, she never managed to get a tour of the factory! Today, we made that wish come true and got a few freebies along the way! Yum. Later that day we drove to the Otago Peninsular to see the "Penguin Place" sanctuary for Yellow Eyed Penguins - the rarest penguin in the World! In fact the sanctuary was even better than expected, as there were hardly any fences or barriers and that allowed the small tour groups to get right up close to the penguins in their natural habitat! The tour even took in some fur seals, Blue Penguins (only 25cm tall as adults!) and several birds including Hawks.

Lorna on the steepest street in the world!
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Upon leaving Dunedin, we drove via (but not up) the steepest street in the world according to the Guinness book of records and walked to the summit! We really pitied the postie who had to deliver to these houses, as it was definately STEEP!!! In fact it was harder going down, as it was so difficult to balance on!

We left that day for Milford Sound, however the weather finally caught up with us (it had been so good to us thus far) and we only managed to drive part of the way to Milford Sound as the fog was so thick. We did manage to get some good views of the Fiords though as we stopped for the night in Te Anau Downs.

The apparently 'famous' station in Dunedin.
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Following our stay here, we drove to Timaru and then Christchurch for our final couple of days in New Zealand before leaving for Sydney and the rest of Australia. On the way to Timaru, we took in Mt Cook and the surrounding lakes Lake Tekapo was one of the more impressive ones, with the distinctive turquoise colour given to the water by "Rock Flour" as a result of glacier movement over time.