Mount Cook

May 15
We arrived at Glentanner, then headed straight for the village of Mount Cook. As the name suggests its right by Mount Cook!! The highest mountain in New Zealand. We couldn't actually see the top of the mountain though so couldn't see exactly how high it was, the summit was covered with clouds.
We decided as it was beginning to rain and the wind was getting up to leave our hike until tomorrow, and then hopefully see the top of Mount Cook. Headed back to camp.

May 16
James got up early and went for a bit of a walk to try and get the sun coming over the surrounding mountains - wearing hat and full waterproofs as overnight the wind had picked up even more and now was raining.

Sunrise at Mount Cook

We packed up camp and filled the van with water - James now not in his waterproofs got soaked as the tap fell off spraying water everywhere. Second lot of clothes today!
There was a magnificent rainbow that formed over the hill behind the camp, so we set about trying to photograph the whole thing, except it proved to be difficult, the further away we got the bigger the rainbow got, so after about 1/2 hour we gave up and made do with the ones we had!

Chasing the Rainbow.

As the wind had picked up, we weren't able to go for a hike by Mount Cook as we may have fallen/flown off the mountain side. Yes thats right we had 200km winds!
We drove away from the mountains towards the coast, stopping now and again to take yet more photos! There were some pretty cool Dams on the way through - the water was crashing over the top and it looked more like the ocean than a lake. James got out of the van to take some photos, I videoed him in the wind, just as I finished filming he got hit by a wave, Gutted I stopped it just too soon - third set of clothes for the day!!

The wave that got james!

We had lunch by a farmers field on the side of the road watching the dog trying to round up some cows, except the cows weren't having any of this and kept charging the brave dog.
We arrived at Oamaru. We went to where the Blue Penguins are but found out we were around 4 hours too early for them, as we were just passing through we didn't have time to stop. We were advised to make our way down to Bushy Beach lookout to hopefully capture a glimpse of the rare Yelloe-Eyed Penguins. These are apparently the rarest in the world. After about an hour of waiting and spotting one lone seal in the surf, we spied a little penguin head bobbing in the surf. Over the next half an hour a few more popped up, came in with the waves and waddled up the beach out of view. At this point we were quite cold and decided to call it a day, on the way back we had one quick look at a different lookout and were amazed to find one of the penguins had climbed up the steep bank through all of the bushes and was stood there right in front of us waddling along - these birds are meant to be extremely shy, but the little girls by us shouting away didn't seem to phase them at all.

Rare Yellow-eyed Penguin

Glentanner, New Zealand