More New Zealand

Thank god we finally hit a town that has some food variety. Namely, donairs and isklanders from a Turkish place, and a Thai food cart on the street. Can you tell we are missing food from home? The one thing that we have learned over the past few months is how lucky we are to have such a huge variety of food in Toronto. Can't wait to have some Rol San, Fune, Spring Rolls, Rajkapuri .. getting hungry now.

Anyhoo this post is dedicated to more pics of NZ.

First set of 4 pics are from the North East part of the South Island namely, Kaikoura, a small little coastal city who's claim to fame is all the marine life living around it. The seals in the pictures are Fur Seals (Really Sea Lions, but they have been misnamed).These guys are nocturnal hunters so they're easy to see lazing about during the day, we were at one point only 10meters away from them..

A lot of these are cloud shots, something about the clouds in NZ, they're just very grand.

Mount Doom in the North Island as promised.

Pics from Franz Joseph Glacier: We did a full day Hike on the glacier and these are some of the shots we got while on the climb. You wore a pair of Crampons (which are not used to relive cramps...) and walked up this crazy mass. Since the topography of the Glacier changes daily you end up in some interesting spots that the guides will swear were clear yesterday. The blue ice that you can see Mel's outline in is a Cave created by water, these caves can last days or months, this one is lovingly named the Worm Hole.

Yellow-Eyed penguins from a reserve called Penguin Place in Dunedin. These little guys are on the endangered list. They exist only in New Zealand on the South Island, and their numbers are a sparse 6000. The reserve offers them some protection in that they set traps for predators like stoat (sort of like a weasel). There are numerous above-ground walk-ways or "tunnels" throughout the reserve that are covered by wood, mesh, and leaves, so that people can observe the penguins without scaring them. We were there around 7pm so we were lucky enough to see quite a few penguins coming in from the ocean, from a day of fishing, back to their nests. Saw March of the Penguins the other day in keeping with the theme (courtesy of a $1 DVD from Thailand).. if you haven't seen it, watch it!

And finally a sign we saw posted at a gas station...some enterprising kid (I hope) has been laughing all the way to the bank with this unique offering..wonder what price he/she would get on eBay?