Albatross, Albatross

I don't have any icecreams, I've just got this albatross..

Red hair, Cathedral, hell even a Castle (but we didn't go in.) We almost forgot where we were. If it wasn't for the fact the sun was shining, we could have been in Scotland (sorry Donna, Stut :) )

The Scottish city of Dunedin. It is a charming little town (5th largest city in the world by area with mere 100,000 peeps - we have no idea how that works). Have to admit it was nice to be in the city again. Bars, restaurants, even an art house cinema where we braved 2 hours of Japanese manga it is a really nice student city. A good contrast to the middle-of-nowheres we have been frequenting.

The next day we headed out through our first rain in weeks to the tip of Otago Peninsula to see the only mainland breading ground for albatross (following the tip from Calvin). The ride there was quite amazing if a bit scary as we skirted along the winding road only meters away from the waters edge. Once there we got to see the mighty albatross. Albatross are larger then we expected, massive in fact, with 3m wing spans - what more can you say - wicked. Probably would have been even better if Rob could stop quoting Monty Python. But, even though we wanted to spend more time in Otago, Mt Cook was calling us.

Lying on the beach, north of Dunedin in Moeraki are some of the freakiest rocks we've ever seen. In the space of some 50m along the beach are about 30 or so meter high spherical boulders. They look like round Rubics cubes, stuck together with some sort of resin - or so we think. As the sea erodes the cliffs, more of them appear. It looks like the cliff is giving birth to them. There are many theories about them, but our money is on aliens. You can read about them here.

Then, off again, we cut across from the coast back towards the Southern Alps of the west coast. Luckily we arrived to the little farm in Twizel just in time to see the sun setting beautifully causing the famously shy Mt Cook to go literally pink. This was viewed across the empty plains and the straight straight roads of Mackenzie Country. Stunning. We stayed in a cottage on a farm, just us and a barely comprehensible but highly affable old farmer. After some food he left us to enjoy reading our books in front of a log fire tended enthusiastically by Nina.

Even though Mt Cook was hiding form us the next morning, we were not deterred to climb up to the view point of the biggest glacier in New Zealand but also dirtiest in the world, namely Tasman glacier. Had some cool icebergs, but the glacier was covered with rubble so almost no ice could be seen. Finally we decided we had our fill of mountains, now that we had seen Mt Cook from 15 different angles, east, west, reflected, clouded, pink, white and the rest so we went to check out the freaky coloured lakes, lake Pukaiki and lake Tekapo. Being glacial lakes filled with silt (rock flour), the light is reflected which creates a vivid milky turquoise colour - or so we were lead to expect. Neither of the lakes was living up to our expectations. So, slightly crest fallen, we headed out of town only to notice at the last minute, when the sun finally came out, the colour appear. A quick u-turn and quite a few photos later, we got to enjoy the freaky colours.

The road to Ch-ch (short for Christchurch) was straight and flat - ohh how we longed for the roundabout, even a corner would do. Ch-ch is a lovely British looking town. We chilled there for couple of days, doing basically nothing. It was great. About the most active thing we did was wake up at 6am to go to the Casino to watch Arsenal go through to semmies of the Champions League. YEY!!

All that remained was to say goodbye to the south island, tidy up the car and jump on the plane to Oz.