South Island Day 7

We woke bright and early and packed up our van yet again to head onward and to stop at church in Queenstown along the way. The church branch in Queenstown is held in a house and there was only one family there that wasn't visiting! We had a nice simple meeting with the Sacrament and testimonies. It was fun to hear from people all over. I love that wherever we travel and go to church, the same thing is being taught and you can always feel the Spirit.

We continued traveling and stopped in Arrowtown, a famous Chinese mining town,and had a picnic in a cute little park. It reminded us of Springdale, UT. We drove some more and stopped at a place that was supposed to be beautiful  on a sunny day, but unfortunately we missed the complete beauty since it was overcast. But we still made the stop at The Blue Pools and walked across another swing bridge and enjoyed the fresh air and running river. 

Another thing on our South Island bucket list was to spot penguins in their natural habitat. It was a rainy day, but our timing of sunset and high tide at Monro Beach was perfect so we decided to brave the bad weather and hope for the best. We donned our rain gear and packed a picnic dinner and made the 45 minute trek to the ocean. We walked through the lushest forest we had ever seen! We've seen a lot of green forests but never as green, mossy, and thick as this! It was magical! We remained dry under the thick canopy of trees until we came out to the ocean. We set up a picnic against the cliff to shield us from the rain and enjoyed some yummy food. We kept our eyes on the shore the entire time, hoping for a penguin sighting. We were all getting cold and cranky and drenched and were about to give up. We stood and stared at a particularly promising area and I saw a creature pop out of the ocean, quickly flap its wings, and hurriedly waddle up to the rocks to disappear.  Nobody believed me, but I'm 95% sure that I saw a penguin! Unfortunately that was all the penguin activity we saw so we decided to call it a day. We had fun on our adventure even though it wasn't completely successful.

We drove to our home in Fox Glacier to find a nice and warm place to stay. The home was spacious and clean. We did laundry and hung our wet clothes to dry. We all slept really well!