Last Day in New Zealand

For our last morning in New Zealand we opted to visit the International Antarctic Centre.  New Zealand, the United States, and Italy use Christchurch as their home base for launching expeditions to Antarctica.  As part of this home base, there is a visitor's center/museum that has some fascinating exhibits about the exploration of the continent as well as a fun penguin area (penguins in this exhibit have been injured in some way and would not survive in the wild).

Here is a list of the seven penguin species found in New Zealand.  Incredibly, despite seeing only a handful of penguins we actually saw three of these:  Little Blue, Yellow-Eyed, and the Fjordland Crested.

The Centre also had a room designed to allow visitors to experience a little bit of the antarctic weather conditions.  The room was set at -8 degrees C (not all that cold really) but then they simulated -25 degrees C wind chill factor by throwing some wind at you.  I donned the booties and the warm jacket and it did get quite chilly.  Laurie said 'no thanks!' but managed to snap this shot of me in the simulated Antarctic:

All in all, the Antarctic Centre was a great way to spend a couple hours before our flight to Sydney.  On the flight we passed over the Southern Alps and had really amazing views of the West Coast once more.  Always have to get the window seat if you can!

Bye New Zealand.  It's been great and I do think we'll be back some day...