More New Zealand

I left Queenstown of Thursday and went off to Dunedin. Dunedin has a huge Scottish heritage, and its train station is one of the most photographed buildings in all of New Zealand. It is also home to one of the main Cadbury Chocolate factories. That being said, I went on a tour of the factory, if for no other reason than to get free chocolate. It was quite the Willie Wonka Chocolate factory but they did try. It was just funny to see how many different kinds of chocolate bars are made and how many of them are region specific. Most of the candy bars they gave us to try I had never heard of before but they were top sellers in NZ. At the end of the tour, they marched us into a silo and dropped one ton of chocolate from above our heads into a huge vat. It was a chocolate lovers dream although I had to have an insulin shot after the tour was over.

Johanna, David, Karen (the couple from Ohio), and I rushed from the chocolate tour to catch the bus taking us on the wildlife discovery tour. Dunedin is located extremely closely to a peninsula where you can see albotrass and yellowed eyed penguins in the wild. Definitely a highlight of my trip was watching a colony of adorable penguins crawling out of the water, onto the beach, and up a steep hill to feed their chicks. It was just so cute!! We also got to walk along a private stretch of beach covered in fur seals as they layed out on rocks playing with their new babies. AWWWWEE!!!! Johanna and I met a couple of kids from England on the tour and it turned out that we were sharing a room with them that night in our hostel, so once we got back from the 6 hour long tour, we all went and grabbed a snack and finished the night off with a couple of games of pool at the hostel.

Yesterday the Magic Bus drove from Dunedin to Lake Tekapo for a relaxing evening in the small summer town. The hostel I stayed in was right on the lake and just a couple of minutes walk from some hot pools, so once everyone had settled in and had dinner, we all headed to the hot pools for a relaxing dip. Then, as the sun set and we dried off, the stars started to come out in droves making it an easy choice to lay outside after dusk to enjoy the view of the milky way. All in all, a lovely and peaceful day.

Now I am back in Christchurch preparing for the long journey home. Tomorrow I fly back to Auckland, where I will spend one night before boarding a plane to return home. WOW, I can't believe it is all almost over!