Towards the North and the warmth

After Stewart Island we drove to Dunedin, also known as "the Edinburgh of the South". It has the same feel to it, old architecture and parks combined with a lot of rain. Dunedin is also a student town by heart and the local University gets to boast about being the oldest one in New Zealand.

Overall the West Coast of the South Island is known for its animals. In theory it's perfectly possible to, for example, go surfing and on the way say hello to enormous sea lions, albatrosses and tiny penguins. There are loads of interesting animals in the area and they are also fairly accessible. We did a day trip to Otago peninsula, but apparently we are not very lucky when it comes to animal sightings. Once again we got back empty-handed. However, the peninsula was very beautiful.

From Dunedin we left for the village of Twizel, which is often a good base for trips to Mount Cook. In Twizel it would have also been possible to spend some kind of a 'Lord of the Rings' theme day, since many battle scenes for the movies were filmed in the area. You would get to cry your heart out and run in the fields with a huge helmet and beautiful big swords! Tempting yes, but in the end decided to save the energy and money for other activities, such as playing battle warriors with the godsons:)

Mount Cook (in Maori 'Aoraki') is the highest mountain in New Zealand with its respectable 3754 meters. We got extremely lucky with the weather as we drove there, not a cloud in the sky! Usually travellers talk about Mount Cook under the topic "so how many times did you guys drive up there before you actually saw it?", as the tip is often covered with clouds. We walked around for 3 hours in a sunny and hot (!) weather, and Libor got so excited that he even went swimming in a glacial lake. Brrrrr!