Finally Barça won 1:0 and since Sam was suporting Madrid, Juli made him pose in FCB jacket for the picture :-D
On the way to Christchurch, we stopped at Moeraki Boulders, to take some pictures with this curious vulcanic stones:
Laura was told by a japanese girl from the hostal, that a nice stop could be at Elephant rocks, which are strange stone formations in the middle of nowhere. Well, we did 40 km more out of the way to see this...hmm not sure it worth that! :D
and the pictures look better then in real life :-D
We continued our jorney and after long hours of driving finally arrived to Christchurch. Here we said good bye to the girls, who were planning to rent a car and stay more days in south island and we instead had to go north. Then we found a house of Danielle and Sam, our hosts, saw a movie and spend quietly the rest of the evening.
Unfortunaltey Erin didn't feel well and called Hamish and Debbie to ask to pick her up from the town where she was staying with her boyfriend. It meant just us and Sam were going to Otago peninsula and Hamish was explaining me the route.
While Juli was playing guitar hero with Debbie and Sam, of course, how could he miss it! :DD
We decide to see a bit of a city and found it pretty boring and small.
One hour was enough to visit City Hall, chruch, railway station and theatre.
We came back to the house, had lunch and together with Sam headed to the peninsula, with a hope to see some wild life.
First stop San Fly bay, where Hamish told us we can see sea lions and if we are very lucky, we can see unique species yeallo eyed penguins.
We arrived, parked the car and went to the beach. The way was going down the hill...which afterwards we would need to go up, oh my God! The wind was blowing and the temperature was a bit chilly.
Finally we have reached the beach and saw sea lions all over it, sleeping without any movement, they seemed to be big black bags rather then wild animals :-D
After taking some pictures with sea lions, we saw people siting on the beach waiting for something. Getting closer we saw a yellow eyed peinguin geting out of the water and going to sand dunes, where they were nesting. Penguins were climbing up to their nests, while sea lions got more active and started to make some noises and even to fight.
Then a girl from Department of conservation has aproached us and told us to stay away from penguins, since we can scare them and they never will nest again on this beach. She said we have to keep at least 200 m from penguins and better if we go to the observation place, a woden house, where we can watch penguins and they can not see us. We went there, didn't see any penguins but saw lots of seals instead, chilling on the beach.
Ok, fist mission was succesfully acomplished and now we went to Taiaroa head, where we saw some albatros flying and next and the last stop was Pilot beach, where we were hoping to see blue penguins.
Llegaba We were told that penguins are coming at 21.30 every day. So we have arrived at 21.00 and saw about 10 people waiting on the beach for the penguins. At 21:25 we started to worry that penguins were not coming anymore, but exactly at 21.30 we saw many spashes on the water, they were coming! Penguins got out of the water, around 50 of them or more and started to climb the hill, where all the people were watching them and waiting to see them closer. Little animals were coming out of the bush and just walking between people with no problem. They were using rabbits holes as nests, and there were lots of rabbits around, we saw them when we arrived to the beach.
Small and clumsy they were everywhere among us, walking with small steps and making bird noises :-D
It looked like the day was succesfully finished, we saw everything :-D
We got back to the house and went to bed very soon, since next day it was an important match at 6.30 in the morning, Barça-Madrid! :D
We woke up in our special "Hilton style" bedroom and were ready for the promissed tour around the farm.
Morning was sunny and warm, and the house was surrounded by Windows XP wallpapers.
Robyn and Graeme were doing everything not to let us go ever :P
First day in the morning we had breakfast together, and then Grame took us to the farm tour in his 4x4. I hurried up to tell that i sit on the front seat - conclusion, the one who goes on the front seat has to open the gates and then close the gates everytime you cross the fields hahaha It was a lot of hoping up and down for me that day :-D
And in the end I had to clean sheep shit from my shoes :DDD
When we got back, Robyn already has prepared lunch for us and we ate all together, like a big family :-D
We didn't want to leave this great place and these great people, but schedule was tight and we had to go to Dunedin - pinguins were calling! :-D
Juli was driving too fast when finally was stopped by policeman, who gave us a 120 NZ dollars fine for speed limit. Juli with no complex, asked policeman what will happen if he doesn't pay. Well, policeman said that in this case probably Juli won't be able to enter New Zealand for 1 year...so, we decided not to pay :-D
We took Scenic Ocean way, full of nice stops and look outs.
Finally we arrived to Dunedin, left girls in the hostel and went to our hosts, Hamish and Debbie.
Juli cooked dinner and prepared sangria and together with our hosts and their son, Sam we had a nice dinner. Their daughter, Erin, was 2 hours away from Dunedin visiting her boyfriend and was supposed to come back next day.
Next day the plan was to go to Otago peninsula and try to see as much wildlife as possible, especially pinguins! :-D
The way to Milford Sound is really beautiful, alpine nature, mountains and beautiful lake Te Anau. We didn’t stop to take pictures, thinking we will do it on the way back anyway, and now we needed to hurry to Milford Sound since I was paranoid we don’t get there in time :-D
Getting closer to Milford sound the road is going through the mountains and sun is not visible anymore, it is cloudy, humid and misty…and chilly!
We checked in for the cruise, got a ticket for free muffins and coffee and successfully boarded on the boat.
The weather was cloudy and windy, but Milford sound still looked gorgeous.
We didn't see any dolphins but instead we saw couple of seals relaxing on a big rock :-D
Many gorgeous watefalls on the way through the fiord made the atmosphere unforgettable.
After 1,5 hours we finished the cruize and it was time to head south, to Gore.
Just after we got into the car, it started to rain. Heavy rain wouldn't stop and we couldn't even get out of the car to see things on the way - it was a total shower.
We stopped on the way to see some waterfalls in the forest and then continued our way through the rain.
We stopped in Te Anau to put some gas and bought food and drinks for sangria and headed to Gore.
Our hosts were living in a farm 15 minutes from Gore, in the middle of green hills and thousands of sheep :-D
And this is Robyn :-D
Graeme, shy and warm, real Kiwi, proud for his farm, together with Robyn, who never get tired making sacrastic jokes welcomed us to their lovely house.
Inpite of the fact that we were going to cook spanish omelet and prepare sangria, Robyn had her own plans for dinner with us and we ended up having a really impressive table full of food and drinks! We had spanish omelet, cheese, salad, lamb and potatos and 5 liters of Sangria, yu-hu!
Together with Robyn, Graeme, Vic (their friend who came by), Esther, Laura and us we had a really lovely family dinner which ended up playing Pictionary :-D
One of the highlights of our stay in Robyn's house was the wallpaper she had on the desktop of her pc :DDD We used this phrase lots of time joking and laughing together in the crazy farm :-D
We played the game, laughed, drank sangria and had great time! And then we spent a great night in 5 stars room with 5 stars bed with electric blankets! (can you believe that? :-D
