January
Chris and I had a wonderful trip to South Island New Zealand. Mom and Dad kindly came to stay with the kids.
We drove to Oamaru through a beautiful coastal town called Timaru.
We saw blue eyed penguins from an observation place. Seemed to be around a hundred of them ...came up out of the sea and waddled across the road to their nesting ground.
We also aw a few yellow eyed penguins on a walk we took but they don't come up in groups to more hard to find.
Enjoyed church in a tiny branch. They are struggling with so few members.
In Dunedin we stayed in a gorgeous Victorian B&B. The lady there was Irish and kept calling us "darlin". So cute...I want to pick that up.
We went to Lanarch Castle, lovers leap and chasm and saw the giant Albatross birds. They are fascinating! They look like a seagull but have a 21 foot wing span. They fly around and around Antarctica mostly just gliding rather than flapping wings to fly. They have to catch the wind with their wings in order to take off and are then airborne until Sept. except to land on water to eat little squid. In Sept they crash land to lay an egg. Once a new bird is big enough to fly, it takes off and never lands on ground for five years! Once they land, having never done it before, they crash and get knocked out for a couple hours and then it takes a couple days before their legs are strong enough to walk!
We drove around the coast through the Catlands and stayed at Cat Whiskers B&B in Te Anu. As we entered our room I heard scratching coming from the closet. It was scary! I cautiously opened the door & out jumped a cat! ha ha!
Visited the lovely Milford sound by boat. Lucky it was a rainy day because the mountains were dripping with thousands of water falls.
In Queenstown we took a gondola up a mountain and rode on the luge. Would just love to bring the kids here for this treat.
In Christchurch we enjoyed watching "punting on the Avon" and a nice exhi8bit on the Antarctic, which if it melted the ocean would rise 200 feet!
