Fines, Queenstown and more

So we headed off towards Milford and Doubtful Sounds not too sure weather we would be staying there that evening as people had warned us about the bad weather and it is really expensive. They also mentoined its a must do.. so really not sure. Then came the decisive moment, on the road to Cromwell from Alex I got pulled over for speeding. I was only doing 120, but in NZ thats 20km/h over the speed limit so a nice $120 smashing fine made my mind up for me, no Milford or Doubtful sound. I never argued at all as I knew if they had caught me the day before my license would have been gone, all karma.

Instead we went to Queenstown to have a look at what all the fuss is about. It deserves the fuss as the center of all adeventure sports in NZ and has a really cool vibe about it, it feels very alpine. We wish we could have stayed there at least one night but due to time we drove on towards Haast and the famous Haast pass.

The mountain passes here were both beautiful and treacherous as you had to use all your concentration to negotiate them. It was one of Celias favourite parts of NZ and she recalls it fondly. Just a little past Haast on the coastal road going south is Jacksons Bay and a popular area for Pengiuns. This time of the year they are moulting and not that active so the best times to view them are at dusk when they are most active. Now as luck would have it, as Celia and I were speeding down the road to get to the place where they hang out I spotted one waddling along side the road. It was the cutest little Crested Penguin I had ever seen, well the first actually, and it stood there posing for us as we snapped away. Once we had driven off I looked in the rearview mirror and saw it waddling away down the road, extremely cute.

We were very fortunate to have seen that one penquin as on Ocean Beach there were none and every other place we looked also turned up zero sightings.