1 January 2017 Happy New Year

Goodbye Friends

We stayed the night in Cromwell with Dioni & Kasiano, a nice Fijian couple that offered up their home to us when the campsites were sold out. Both in New Zealand for work, we bonded over missing our families for New Years.

New friend Dioni and her partner Kasiano (not pictured here) hosted us for the night in Cromwell, New Zealand.

Dioni and Kasiano were such gracious hosts. We hope to see them again some day!

Oamaru & the Blue Penguins

Leaving Cromwell we headed east. Our goal was to reach Oamaru, a city on the eastern coast, before the evening so that we could see the Blue Penguins returning home.

Oamaru is known for its Blue Penguin colony, with over 200 penguins. Blue Penguins are the world’s smallest penguin at only 1ft tall and weighing around 2lbs. They’re tiny! Every morning, the penguins go out to sea to fish and return to their nests around dusk. In Oamaru, a colony was formed to help protect the penguins. There are nesting boxes provided for the penguins, which prove to be less likely to collapse from flooding than their natural nests.

Sure enough right around 9:00pm (when the sunset here…it’s New Zealand’s summer after all!) we started to see little penguin heads pop up out of the waves. Riding the surf on their bellies they washed ashore and quickly waddled up the rocks towards their nests.

I’m so glad I got to see some penguins on this trip! I know at the South Pole Station there won’t be any wildlife, penguins included, as there is no food source that far inland.

Happy New Year

Travis and I took a break from camping for New Years Eve and settled into a cozy cottage. With a home cooked meal and a warm fireplace, we brought in 2017.

Travis and I welcomed the New Year at a cute bnb called Arrow Cottage in Oamaru.

In fact, we were the third time zone to celebrate the New Year. Back in the U.S. you had to wait another 18 hours before the ball dropped in Times Square!

Steampunk

Before leaving Oamaru, we stopped in at Steampunk HQ. Who knew Oamaru is the steampunk capital of New Zealand?

The Steampunk HQ in Oamaru.

Mount Cook

We finished out the day by visiting Mount Cook, a large mountain range that sits in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. The views were stunning – mountains with glaciers unraveling down the sides, waterfalls plunging hundreds of feet down sharp cliffs, and rivers snaking through the valley below.

The mountain shown here isn’t Mount Cook itself but a neighboring mountain in the same range. This picture gives you a glimpse into the humbling beauty of this landscape.