Last week in NZ

Sat
We drove from Te Anau in the West all the way across to the East coast to the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin in order to take a look at an Albatros colony only to be foiled by the department of conservation who had closed the breeding colony for some reason. We managed to take a look around the information centre and were lucky enough to see a couple of birds flying past but we missed out on the up close encounter with birds on the nest or young ones strengthening their wings.
As we drove from West to East the natural NZ gave way to the agricultural NZ, fields and fields and fields, cows, sheep, cows and more sheep, occassionally a Llama or a filed of crops but mainly cows and sheep.
As we went North to Timaru from Dunedin we passed through some areas that could have been in the UK, except for a few NZ trees. We reached Timaru around 6pm and rang Rob and Alice (my uncle and aunt) and then found our way up to their house about 15mins out of town. We had a great evening, good food, good company and their team playing rugby on the TV!
On Sunday we helped look after Izzie, my cousin Harry's one year old daughter and then went round to Sam's farm (another cousin) to watch him weaning the cattle on horseback and meet his wife, son and daughter. Later in the early evening we had a big family meal with Harry, Tash and Izzie, Sam, Sarah, Cooper and Zoey and also Rob and Alice and us. We had a belated 1st birthday cake for Zoey, more good food, good company and fun.
On Monday Celso, Tris and I set off to 'do' the Mackenzie Basin, Mount Cook and the big Lakes in the region. The Mackenzie basin is so dry, everything is dusty and brown in colour but their are fantastic views, autumn colours, lakes and mountains to amaze all around. Lots of Lord of the Rings' middle earth scenes were filmed around here; it's the grandeaur and enormity of everything, big wide open spaces with mountains on all sides; incredible.
We drove up alongside Lake Pukaki to the base of Mount Cook and took a walk up to a spot that overlooks the glacier. At first I didn't even recognise the glacier, it is nothing like the glimmering white glaciers at Franz Joseph and Fox; this is a grey, stone covered glacier that just looks like a pile of rubble until you look closely. It has glimpses of white at the face and in the lake at the end there are enormous glaciers floating. We were planning to spend the night at the end of Lake Pukaki to see Mount Cook at the end of the lake at sunrise; but the wind came up the van started to rock and we decided to go and seek shelter in Twizle where we had a barbecue and finished off all our food.
On Tuesday we drove back to Timaru over loads of wooden tressel bridges crossing the rivers; most nearly dry but some with crystal clear waters. We also passed a series of dams. Aviemore dam is the one of the earliest ones built in NZ and it still produces nearly 1/5th of the electricity in the country. From Timaru we sent our largest parcel yet back to the UK; 7kg; full of goodies from our trip, and then we spent a few hours cleaning out the van, packing and getting ready to go to Christchurch tomorrow.
On Wednesday we drove up to Christchurch and returned the van, then went to our hotel and lazed around before going out to have a look around.
On Thursday we had an enormous lie in; I didn't realise we were all so tired, and then walked across Hagley Park into the town, stopped at a cafe next to the Avon river and watched the canoes and the gondolas travelling up and down. We wandered around the shops and then returned to our hotel to chill out before our early start to the airport and Australia tomorrow.