Mt. Cook and Dunedin
With the break between school terms 1 and 2, a quick Lilly and Carrie trip to catch Ed Sheeran quickly grew into a full-on road trip to see Mt. Cook and visit Dunedin.
We were excited to see this part of the South Island as many a south islander had recommended a visit to the lakes near the towns of Tekapo and Twizel as must see in our time in NZ. The lakes are a mesmerizing beautiful turquoise blue. The color is created by rock flour from surrounding glaciers. The fine rock flour (dust) is suspended in the water and causes the magnificent turquoise. On a sunny day, Lake Pukaki is further enhanced by the sight of snow-capped. Aoraki (Mt. Cook) in the distance.
The waters are also home to a number of salmon farms. The swift, cold current from the glacial melt make ideal conditions for raising great tasting salmon. We even convinced Lilly to try her first bit of sashimi.
As we drove along the turquoise blue waters of Lake Pukaki, the approaching Mount Cook National Park and the Southern Alps, you begin to get a sense of the vastness of the region. Center in the mountain range and dominating the landscape, is Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain. Named after the explorer James Cook it tops out at 12,218 feet.
Mt. Cook served as the training ground for Sir Edmund Hillary in preparation for his Everest ascent and inside the Mount Cook Village, you will find the inspiring and highly interactive Edmund Hillary Center. Of course, after our visit, we took the elevator to our 4th-floor room. Couldn't even manage a few flights of stairs. Sorry, Edmund!
This year we celebrated Easter in Dunedin. The hidden sweets theme was chocolate Kiwis, chocolate Bunnies and chocolate Eggs... and chocolate Jelly Beans ... and chocolate Lollipops... its all chocolate down here. They do it well and there is no reason to stray.
We were able to find a non-chocolate Ham and put together a pretty solid traditional Easter Sunday dinner. There may or may not have been Mac-n-Cheese.
Later that evening Carrie and Lilly headed off to see Ed Sheeran for Lilly's first concert. A very memorable event for me, as I was left with 3 chocolate-covered sugar-crazed kids in someone else's house. Don't touch that.
Tomahawk beach was a short walk away and the dunes providing some excellent beach-sledding and sand-tasting.
We took a trip out along the Dunedin coast for a visit to the Penguin Place. Once a family sheep farm, this prime Penguin habitat has been converted to a tourism funded penguin reserve and rehabilitation center primarily focused on the endangered Yellow-eyed penguin.
Within the Rehabilitation center, you can get a close up look of several Yellow-Eyes receiving care to get back up to full health. The center receives close to a 100 penguins in need of care each year and is able to successfully return nearly 90% of them back to the wild.
During the breeding season, visitors are able to quietly walk the various blinds and observe the penguin parents caring for their chicks. The whole preserve is fenced off from the introduced predators (stoats, ferrets, feral cats) that wreak havoc on a number of New Zealand bird species.
The breeding area leads out to a beach and rocky peninsula where many fur seals could be found napping the day away.
Next, on our Seabird Saturday itinerary was the Royal Albatross Center. The excellent educational exhibits provided a great review of all the seabirds that pass through or make New Zealand home. From here you can book tours to view the Royal Albatross nestlings and catch the parents taking off and landing from Taiaroa Head. With silence being a crucial factor to success in this interaction, and out of respect for the many birders who had traveled to photograph the only mainland colony of Northern Royal Albatross in the world, we decided to hang out near the parking lot and hopefully luck into fly-by or two.
At this point in our year of traveling through New Zealand, we had been in countless gift shops and visitor centers. Each one with a display or two of postcards highlighting a NZ natural beauty. Moeraki Boulders was always front in center in those displays. With our programming complete, we dutifully stopped to check out the unique boulders on a beach and pick up a postcard or two on our way home.
Actually, we stopped twice, here are the boulders from above at high tide. Forgot to consult the tide chart in our exhaustive planning!
It was only two days after Easter.
Big Boulders on a Beach is Fun!
