On the road in the South Island

I promise this is the last post on New Zealand, but there were a few more cool things I wanted to share.
Calvin handled driving on the left like a pro for the thousands of kilometers we covered. ( We were stopped for road construction here.)

We took another great ferry ride to the south island. We had amazing views as we came into the harbor at Picton.

We stopped for lunch at Nelson which is a pretty resort town on the north coast. I wish we would have had more time to explore there, but I loved their clock tower.

Motueka was the gateway to our kayak tour at Abel Tasman National Park.  There is a pretty little stone church there that is now used as an art center.

After our Milford Track hike we spent an extra day in Queenstown. It sits at the side of 50 mile long Lake Wakatipu. We drove to Glenorchy, a small town at the end of the lake.  This is where Calvin was pulled over for driving too slowly. It was a rare rainy day on our trip.

We also found a pretty stone church on the shore of Lake Tekapo.  It is shared by both the Anglican and Catholic communities.  It boasts no stained glass but has a giant picture window that looks out over the lake toward the glaciers at the far end.

We stayed two nights at Wanaka, which is the gateway to the Mt Aspiring National Park.  There was so much to see in the park that we didn't see much of Wanaka, so we left this gorgeous lake mostly unexplored.

On our way back to the east coast we stopped for a sidewalk lunch in front of an old bank converted to a restaurant.

 Our last major stop was in Dunedin on he Otago peninsula.  It was first settled by Europeans in 1831 and has a history of being a major city in New Zealand. The train station is noted for being one of the most photographed buildings in New Zealand, so we, of course, took a picture.

This is the First Church of Otago. We didn't see a lot of dramatic churches in New Zealand, but this was pretty impressive.

It seemed a little ornate for a Presbyterian church, but I liked it.

On our last day of sight-seeing we drove out to the end of the Otago Peninsula to see some penguins.  There is a small colony of yellow-eyed penguins here that they are trying desperately to save. There are only about 4000 yellow eyed penguins in the world, and all of them live around the south island of New Zealand.  We visited a preserve that is trying to create a safe habitat for the penguins in the wild.  These penguins do not survive in captivity.  Despite the best efforts the numbers continue to decrease. These penguins were in the infirmary for just a short while, hopefully to give them a better chance of survival.

We were able to view the penguins in a semi native habitat by walking around in underground blinds.

We saw a couple swimming in a pond. It didn't look too appealing to me apparently penguins like it.

After the penguins we went to an albatross sanctuary.  We had a nice lunch there, but didn't see any birds.

And finally a nod to Queen Victoria who gets her name and statue everywhere.

And really the last picture: sheep, green grass and a waterfall.  New Zealand: we almost saw everything.