Last of NZ

Not too much to add, but last morning in Queenstown we went to the Kiwi Birdlife Park, because I decided that I didn't want to leave NZ without seeing a kiwi. It was worth it. They are soooo funny! They are like bumbling little brown, furry round soccer balls with long pointy beaks. The whole time we watched, this one just walked back along the wall, poking his beak into the ground. It was really funny. The Keas were also funny. They are large, cheeky parrots who are very intelligent (comparable to monkeys) and are capable of biting through rubber/other materials and destroying things such as windshield wipers (we watched one chew a large hole in a milk carton).

As rain was the forecast for Mt Cook, we instead headed to Dunedin to go up the east coast. At Dunedin we went to Cadbury World...i.e. the CHOCOLATE FACTORY!!! It was so cool. And we got a big bagful of free chocolate. But I have decided that the Kiwi chocolate bars aren't as good as the Canadian ones, as they don't have any peanut butter ones and prefer marshmallow filling. Boo.

We also went on a ridiculous drive through the Otago Peninsula (a weird outcropping of land by Dunedin), following roads on a Lonely Planet map that turned out to be crazy hilly gravel roads through farmer's sheep fields..(shhhhh our camper wasn't supposed to drive on those)...how nice of LP to post a map of small, ridiculous gravel roads through Otago Peninsula, even though it couldn't provide a decent map of Dunedin... Anways we were looking for this "chasm" that was supposed to be really cool. We finally arrived there, and we had to walk 15 minutes right through a farmer's land, scaring all the sheep along the way, and eventually reached the chasm. It was kind of like a canyon type thing right by the ocean. It was fairly mediocre. Quite the adventure though.

We continued on to Omarua the next day and saw PENGUINS!!! Yayyyy. Cute little blue penguins. They were so cute. We watched them come up from the sea in groups of about 12, wait cautiously to see if it was safe, and then scurry into their little homes/nesting areas on land. We even saw two of them fighting, likely over a female or a nesting area, and we saw two mating...ewww haha. They were soooo cute though.

Back in Christchurch now, said goodbye to our lil camper. Flying out to Auckland tomorrow for our last day in NZ!!