Dunedin and Queenstown

Dunedin is a older city and even though its one of the bigger cities on the South Island, it doesn't feel rushed or too busy. Martin bought some data package for iPad, so hopefully that will improve the possibility of uploading some pictures for you. For Martins awesome pictures you have to wait but for now you can at least see what we are up to.

Dunedin - Otago Peninsula. A place where you can see royal albatrosses and penguins. We were lucky to see albatrosses flying around and what a big bird. The wingspan must be at least 3m. Beautiful birds. We didn't see the colony because it would cost us $100 and unfortunately we didn't see penguins either because that would be another $100. Well, we might be lucky still and see them for free in Kaikoura.
Otherwise the Peninsula is a gorgeous place. Totally awesome. And, I finally got some pictures of my sheep. We stopped on the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the bay and on the slopes were thousands of sheep. All you could hear was birds and sheep. No traffic, no city hum, just quiet. I have a video but you have to wait for that one.

The countryside between Dunedin and Queenstown is very dry. We don't know if it is like that because of the exceptionally dry summer or if it is always like that. It's like driving through Kamloops.

Queenstown - what a different city compare to Dunedin or even Christchurch. Just imagine Banff Village on the shore of Okanagan Lake, and with all the tourists and attractions (helicopter rides, jet boat rides, gondolas, bungy jumping, paragliding and more). Very nice place to walk around and enjoy beautiful scenery of the lake Wakatipu and the mountains - The Remarcables. We did join other tourist on one of the attractions that Queenstown offers - gondola and luge. You take the gondola up the mountain and from there you take another short lift to luge track. Wow, fun, fun, fun! At first we thought that it will be little slow but you can make the luge to go quite fast. At times I thought I will flip over. Even though group racing is not permitted, guess what we did. Phillip won three times, Martin one time and I won once. Poor Michael was too light to make it go faster then ours. But we all had lots of fun. Beautiful views from the lookout platform and we were even lucky to see a crazy guy bungy jumping - while sitting on his bike, crazy huh? I had hard time to even watch him. Never ever this will happen to me!!

After talking to visitor center girl (she was from Edmonton, Canada) and learning that the west coast is a lot like Jasper and Banff, we've decided to make our way to the east side and get to Malborough and Nelson region as fast as possible. We have only four days left on the South and the North part is the place with beautiful beaches. Planning to have a driving day tomorrow and go as far as possible.

We've managed to get as far as Lake Tekapo that evening. When we were here couple days ago we had a bad weather but this time we had sun and Martin was able to get some great pictures of the Church. We even saw Mt.Cook at Lake Pukaki.

That night was are first freedom camping - away from the town by the lake Alexandra.

Another great day. And of course we saw lots of sheep, sheep, and more sheep.