After the excitement of the blue penguins, we took a detour off the motorway to Christchurch so we could visit Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo, on the way stopping off to view some ancient Maori rock art. First we came to Lake Pukaki, which is a beautiful deep-blue coloured lake with Mount Cook and the Southern Alps in the distance. The colour of the water has been caused by glacial feed, so it is really stunning. Further along the road we came to Lake Tekapo, whic...

Today we drove on to Oamaru, a small historic town (in NZ terms anyway) on the east coast, and home to a colony of Blue Penguins, who every night return to their homes at dusk and cross infront of a grandstand packed full of people. The colony was set up after the harbour had been renovated, and people realised that they had displaced dozens of blue penguins (also called Little Penguins, as they are the smallest species of penguin), so some locals placed nest-bo...

Arriving in Dunedin, we had heard it was famous for 2 things, beer (Speights) and chocolate (Cadbury's). Being lovers of both we thought it would be rude not to get involved. Dunedin is Celtic for 'Edinburgh', we wondered why we kept seeing lots of ginger haired folk playing the bagpipes and tossing the caber! It's also freezing cold in Dunedin as well, think it rained every day we were there, so a definate reminder of Scotland. Our first trip i...

After stopping off at Bluff we headed back up to Invercargill where we could join the road to the Catlins Coast.This coastline was very rugged and so a refreshing change from the South Island's alpine and rural scenery.Our first stop on the coast was at Waipapa Point, where we were supposed to be able to see the rare Hookers sea lion. We got out of the car and stumbled up to the Lighthouse near the edge of the cliffs, it was really windy. At this point we cou...

After leaving Milford Sound we stopped briefly at Invercargill on our way down to Bluff (the southernmost point of the South Island of New Zealand). Whilst in Bluff we had to get the token picture of us next to the signpost with miles to London, New York, Tokyo, South Pole etc. We went to Bluff with the intention of taking the ferry to the Stewart Island. However the weather in the South Island had been so bad that we decided not to go. We had heard from the lo...