Milford Sound, Mt. Cook, & OMG PENGUINS

Yeah, so, we went out to Milford Sound.  It looked just like the postcards.  It's a pretty fiord, yeah, but I have this feeling that it's popular because the tourism industry has made it popular.  We didn't do any of the cruises or anything like that.  Maybe if we had, I would have been more impressed.

looks like a postcard

Kea, however, will always delight me.

who is playing with whom?

We also went to Mt. Cook for a day.  That wasn't that exciting, either; the weather sucked, so I didn't even see the famous mountain.  Unless you're prepared with crampons and an ice axe, there isn't a tremendous amount of hiking to be done in Aoraki Mt. Cook National Park, either.

iceberg. kinda cool, but probably not worth the drive.

On the drive from Milford Sound to Mt. Cook, we stopped in Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula.  Dunedin was a sweet little city; it's definitely my favorite city on the South Island!  I wanted to visit penguin colonies on the Otago Peninsula.  The iSite tourist information bureau told us there was a chance that we might see penguins at a certain beach.  We went to that beach and got talking to a few friendly, kind Kiwis who told us that we'd have much better luck at a different beach.  Puttered down the potholed, one-lane country road, pulled into the carpark, ran down the largest sand dune I've ever seen, and HOLY SMOKES that's a BIG and unexpected mammal!

i think that i could outrun him if i needed to

We did make it to the hide while the yellow-eyed penguins were coming back to land from fishing at sea all day.  I was totally stoked, because yellow-eyed penguins are some of the rarest penguins in the world.

OMG penguins!!!

Here are the rest of the photos, with commentary: