So after Christchurch, the next section focussed on birds! We headed to Oamaru in search of two types of penguin - yellow-eyed and blue. We were briefly worried that we would not be able to find the yellow-eyed in time as we were only arriving in the town at the right time for them to come in from the sea and we still needed to find them, but we needn't have worried, no sooner had we entered into Oamaru there were road signs everywhere pointing us to penguins! We drove down pretty quickly and positioned ourselves in the hide overlooking the beach with a Scottish man who had emigrated to NZ to work with the penguins. He was very helpful and lent us binoculars and also pointed out the penguins which we would never have seen! They are pretty small anyway, but in the distance - in the bushes - they were not much more than white dots! It took a long time for any to appear, and we entertained ourselves in between with watching a fur seal come out of the water and spend a long time scratching his back on the sand. Eventually, we were directed to a small moving thing on the beach that was a juvenile penguin looking for its hole, apparently it was obviously juvenile as it didn't know where exactly that was! The Scottish man regularly rescues this type of penguin when they can't find home and get too dehydrated in the Sun! After a while, when we were preparing to leave, we bumped into Kim and John - who had just arrived from the UK. Very random as it wasn't planned at all! We also discovered they were heading down to see the blue penguins at nightfall! After enough squinting at dots on the hillside - very clever dots that can climb up pretty steep earth banks! - we headed off to find our hostel which was quite out of town. It was again pretty nice and cosy, we had a double room - as it was the only room of any kind left available in Oamaru - so we could spread out our stuff! After a quick dinner we jumped back in the car to head into town for the blue penguins. This was a more organised viewing, where you pay $20 to sit in a kind of grandstand facing the sea and a guy on a microphone explains what will happen. It will get dark, the flood lights will come on (but the penguins will not see it as it is at a wavelength outside their range) and we will wait for "rafts" of penguins to come ashore. We sat watching them in pretty much silence for over an hour, they came in slowly at first, then in larger groups. They were really tiny and cute and if we turned around we could see the babies sticking their heads out of the burrows. They waited for a group to assemble before climbing the rocks and crossing the road to their burrow area. After watching a lot of them do exactly the same thing, we headed off, taking care not to drive over the ones that were freely roaming around the car park! The next day we were moving onto bigger birds - the royal albatross! But before we could see these I had to drive what I would consider the scariest road of my life along the Otago Pensinsula. It was horrendous and I'm sure it shouldn't have been. It was just the narrowness and windiness of it and the fact that about 5cm outside the white line the road fell away into the water. It was not fun, but we finally made it to the Albatross centre and after the most ridiculous wait for the most horrible coffee I've ever had (if you are going there I would not advise buying it) we went into a small room for our talk on albatrosses. It is here we started accumulating "egg facts". We had already discovered that a blue penguin egg weighs approx 40g which compared to a chicken egg - apparently 25g - is big. We were now told that an albatross egg weighs 450g - thats pretty big! The wingspan is something like 3.5m and body length something like 1.2m and once they fly from the nest, they can stay out at sea for 5 years! After gleaning all these interesting bits of information we headed up the hill to the hide, from where you can see nesting albatrosses and hope to see flying ones - they are very clear to state this is not guaranteed! We spent a fair while searching the sky with various "oh theres one - oh no its just a seagull" type comments, before our guide finally pointed out a real one. It was massive and soared through our field of vision without flapping at all (they are able to do this as they can lock their elbow joint in a strong position to create glider type wings - interesting eh?) and then disappeared. It did this several times - long enough for us all to take photos of small blurry dots in the distance and then we trudged back down the hill to the Albatross Centre, feeling pretty lucky and glad we took the absolutely huge detour to Dunedin to see them! After this though, we were on a mission. We had to get to Queenstown, it was New Year's Eve and we were meeting Kim and John and Anna and Rich who were also on holiday in NZ. The drive was long, again, but again went through some amazing scenery. The weather was hideous though, driving rain and thick cloud everywhere. There was supposed to have been international cricket happening just outside Queenstown that day but it had been cancelled, but with that, the extra holiday traffic hitting the city and general miserable commuters in the rain we ended up stuck in a massive traffic jam for ages. When we finally got to our hotel - that I had had to book as I was too disorganised to book early enough to get a hostel! - we were not in great moods. The staff were rubbish, not amazingly helpful and could not explain to us why half of the spaces in the underground car park was full of old carpet rolls and furniture. So we parked in the rain. The room was pretty nice though although we put the (big, flat screen) TV on to news that Queenstown was going to be horrendous for New Year - there were too many people flocking there with no where to stay - camper vans on the side of the road and people sleeping in cars! It didn't sound good, but it was actually the best organised, least busy New Year I've ever had. Arwa nad I strolled down to the lake and straight into a restaurant for dinner, after which we met the others and walked straight into a nice little pub with a large, round, vacant table with 6 leather armchairs - perfect! There was no queue at the bar ever. After a few hours we decided to try another of the bars that our wristbands got us into, and again, no queue to get in and none at the bar! We stayed here til 11.55 to avoid the rain, then scuttled down to the wharf to watch the fireworks, which were pretty cool although there was no countdown! Then we scuttled back - straight into the bar - drank champagne and stayed until we wanted to go home, and when we did we walked as it was so close - no need for taxis! bliss! Arwa and I hadn't allowed much time for Queenstown, we'd even thought we'd be hungover in the morning and want to just go and watch the fish, but we woke up feeling fine. We annoyingly found out breakfast wasn't included, then headed to a place in town to treat ourselves to a cooked breakfast in the morning sunshine. After this we headed to the information stand at the wharf to ask about where to see the fish (we knew there was an underground window somewhere to watch all the fish in the lake swimming) but ended up coming away having booked a jet boating trip round the lake and two of the rivers. It was amazing! we were kitted up in long waterproof coats and buoyancy aids and all sat in rows holding onto the heated hand rails in the boat. Greg went through a few safety tips - i.e. hold on - and we were off. It was fairly bumpy over the lake as the wind had made loads of waves but once in the river we sped up. We made a quick stop at the company wharf - and switched boats, for reasons never explained - then set off again. The jet boats can travel in water 4 inches deep, even though they need 1m to start up, so we went through some pretty shallow sections, occasionally doing 360 degree spins. The control Greg had over the boat was amazing, he would direct it straight at the concrete pillars of bridges and then inches before impact turn it on a sixpence and save our lives! The trip was about an hour and soon we were back at the wharf, heading down to watch the fish - and warm up! After this we went back to the car and headed off down towards Te Anau. This drive took us past more of the lake and "The Remarkables" - these being the mountains that surrounded Queenstown. They were remarkable! The land then turned more to farmland with lots of sheep and haystacks, then finally we arrived in Te Anau. We'd booked a trip to see the glow worms, so after settling in we headed down to the I-site to catch the ferry. The lake at Te Anau is the second largest lake in New Zealand - after Taupo. Its surrounded by beautiful hills and mountains so the trip over to the worms was really worth it on its own. At the glow worms place they sat us down and told us about the worms - that they make these sticky threads that hang down to catch the insects and they switch on their glow to attract them. Once ensnared they draw in the insect and eat it. They spend about 3 weeks as eggs, 9 months as worms, 2 weeks in cocoons and about 3 days as flies - because they have no mouths so die of hunger! To get into the cave we had to go through some dimly lit tunnels past loud gushing waterfalls and climb into a small metal boat. The guide then turned off all the lights and pulled the boat along a chain that was hanging over head until we got to the glowworms. It felt a bit like a boat to Hades or some other horrible place! They were pretty cool, looked like lots of little blue-green stars. We stayed and watched them glow for ages, then were towed back along the chain to the landing stage. The boat trip back was even more amazing than the one out as the Sun was setting and I went a bit crazy taking photos and testing different camera modes! Back in Te Anau we had a pretty chilled evening, chatting to a crazy spanish man who was cycling round NZ and eating a kilo of bananas a day! The next day was planned as a long one. We were going to drive up to Milford Sound, hopefully do a boat trip and then drive all the way back past Te Anau and up past Queenstown to Wanaka - and all in heavy, driving rain and wind and thick cloud! So in summary, the day was wet, very wind-swept and pretty cold - but beautiful!! There was so much water that it flowed off all the cliffs of the fjords as extra waterfalls, but it was too windy for the water to fall so they fell half way down the cliff, then would blow away into the sky - crazy! On our boat their were a lot of Japanese tourists who did not seem at all bothered by the beauty of the Sound, and sat inside in the dry and ate food from the canteen!! We almost got blown off the bow of the boat on several occasions! Once back in the car we drove for hours and hours and finally arrived in Wanaka.