North to South

Our North Island tour is over. We saw some really old Kauri trees-- one is estimated to be around 2000 years old, it was HUGE-- and we saw a museum about the kauri trees and their place in NZ history which is substantial since they are old as! We camped on the same awesome beach as my last post on our last night of traveling before heading down to Auckland. There was a produce stand beside the highway and we bought some watermelon and pretended it was Iowa in July, or at least I did.
It was rainy in Auckland for our last 3 days in the city but we managed to do some laundry, figure out some stuff on the computer, make travel arrangements (our flight back to the US is officially booked and we will be home to STL on April 23rd), and rest after all that traveling. We also hit the city for a browse through the museum, a stop at some bookstores, and to visit Matt's 11th floor office which has a balcony overlooking the harbour. SO COOL! We flew out of Auckland on Thursday last week and arrived in Christchurch where we returned to the backpackers we cleaned for a month to find it much less clean! But it was not too crowded and we only stayed one night before packing up and taking a bus to the highway and hitching our way to the deep south!
Our first ride was an Adventist minister who Brian enjoyed chatting with. Our second ride was with a man who was going to be the pit crew for his nephew's drag racing event for the weekend. Our third ride was with Ben, a cement truck driver. Our final ride was with a guy not too much older than us who is a vet in a small town near where Ben dropped us off.
We stayed in Oamaru in a holiday park and booked a penguin tour. We saw the yellow eyed penquin and the blue penguin at two different places. It was really cool. The yellow penguins are super-protected so we were far away and only saw a few at quite a distance. But the blue penguins were just across the fence from us and would come to shore in groups of ten and then waddle and hop their way up the rocks, across the road and to their man-made burrows in the hills. Some went into the parking lot and ventured away from the burrows, getting quite close to us. Penguins are pretty much the cutest little creatures ever.
We are now in Dunedin, traveling with a young German couple with a campervan. We are lucky to met some friends with wheels! We are looking forward to seeing more of the south island in the next few weeks before we have to start working again!

Peace!