Almost finished with South Island

We've had a great time in the South Island. We're finishing our tour up in Christchurch. We are supposed to go on a hot air balloon ride tomorrow, but the weather isn't sounding too promising...we'll find out tomorrow morning at 5:30. From there, we will fly to Auckland on the North Island and then out to Sydney.

In Queenstown, we went on something called shot over river canyon jets...they went really fast and did 360s. All the ski areas were closed, so we didn't get to go skiing. The day we left Queenstown for a place called Te Anau, it snowed and the ski areas opened. We went on a cruise of Doubtful Sound, which is a fjord. It snowed while we were there...it was quite gorgeous. Apparently it normally doesn't snow on both sides of the mountain we had to drive over to get to the sound...but it did and it was gorgeous...although a little scary driving down unplowed roads in the snow...no one lives over there, so it was fun. The sound was beautiful. We saw dolphins and seals.

We then drove to Dunedin and to a great peninsula called Otago Peninsula. It was beautiful! We went to a beach at sunrise to watch penguins. We saw a few yellow eyed penguins and fur sea lions. We had to cross right in front of the sea lions and apparently they can be aggressive to humans. Luckily, we're alive and fine. It was amazing to see the animals in their natural habitat. There were only five other people on the beach when we saw the animals. It was great.

We then drove up to Christchurch as we are flying here to Auckland. We'll post more when we can.