It is Friday morning and we are looking round the centre of Dunedin. Later we head north to the Mt Cook area and more Lord of the Rings. Yesterday morning we travelled across country including being on the Presidential Highway from Gore to Clinton. In this tea we noted their we're many fields of deer, similar to sheep and cattle. The picture shows our first ever view of the Pacific Ocean.

Here is the last blog for now as in an hour we drive across the Island to Dunedin and out of the mountains for now. The lecture shows where we stopped for our evening meal on the way back from Milford Sound last evening.

With the high rainfall (10 metres per year) and steep terrain there are major incidents as well as earthquakes. Snow, rocks and trees often cascade down the slopes. Here is a result of rocks coming across the road. We were not there at the time of the slip.

Up the road here you can see an entrance to a tunnel. This takes you through the mountain at a gradient of 10 degrees. There are traffic lights as only one way at a time. It was very difficult to build this road down to the Sound !!

We have not seen ferns as large as this before. Walking through the forest areas feels very tropical.