New Years dinner at the Mayo Clinic

The science center in Dunedin was the first place to checkout once we arrived. It has a 3 story slide indoors, a bunch of great hands-on science experiments, and a butterfly garden. There are other historical exhibits too but we kind of ran out of time. While in the butterfly garden a few landed on Zane since he was wearing a bright blue shirt. 

The best part of the museum though was the traveling art exhibit, Lego Relics.  It was very creative. The theme was a futuristic world where the humans were long gone and the Lego mini-figures took over the remnants left behind. The artists used iconic items such as a VW bug, a bunch of old TV sets, a jukebox, ATM machine, Jet ski, grandfather clock, jukebox, an arcade claw machine and others as the base platform to build their mini-worlds. Zane's favorite display was "trashtopia", which took place in an old dumpster full of trash.  The mini-figures were recycling the trash to generate power for their city and process old plastic bottles to produce new Lego bricks. Z now wants us to get a used dumpster to put in his play room at home so he can create his own Lego world. It will be such an asset to our home.  

Trashtopia

Claw machine space port

After a walk through the downtown area, dubbed "The Octagon", we grabbed some lunch, played a few rounds of Uno, then visited the local botanical garden. The garden was another very large and pretty park with a playground for Zane to burn off some energy and an aviary for Nicole to talk to the birds. We also visited the Emerson brewery, Nicole got me a tour and tasting while she and Zane went across the street for a round of mini-golf. They joined me back at the brewery later where Z beat his parents at Uno 4 games of 5. And we didn't even go easy on him, in fact we had to gang up on him to win that one hand!

In Invercargill, we felt so honored to have George and Lindsey fly in and visit us. We met up with them on New Years Eve and spent the rest of New Zealand south island adventure with them.  After almost driving over George in the grocery store parking lot with our enthusiasm to see them, we checked into our hotel and walked through Queens Park with another amazing playground, aviary, farm animals and greenhouse.  We went out to the 'best' restaurant in Invercargill for a five course meal.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize we should have said not to use their sweet mayo (which they put on everything).  NZlanders sure love their sweet mayo!

The next morning we hiked out to the furthest point on the south island we could get to at Stirling point to see Stewart Island.  Next land mass after Stewart is Antarctica! Zane pointed out all of the streams, a pool with tadpoles, and waterfalls on our walk. At our turnaround point we got to do a little scrambling on the rocks and crawled through a small rock cave.  Zane was also incredibly excited to reintroduce Rummicube and Uno to George and Lindsey and show them the zip line at playground.

On the way to our next destination, we stopped by Gemstone beach and George, Zane and I became beavers and attempted to build a dam where a stream was flowing to open water. We failed, the flow was too strong but fun to play in. Nicole and Lindsey collected cool rocks which Lindsey graciously brought back to San Diego for us, along with a few of our favorite cold weather clothes since we won't need them in the warm climates of remainder of our trip.  

We then drove to Te Anua (and stopped on the way to see a real dam) and played mini golf (George got schooled by Zane who again got another hole in one on hole 9). We went out for a nice dinner at Redcliff Cafe after a walk on part of the Kepler track south of Te Anua.

The drive to Queenstown is very scenic as you drive along the edge of the great lake Wakatipu. We were pretty hungry for lunch were lucky to find a great restaurant that had a kids meal with a tuna roll and french fries - what a combo! We then checked out the sensory maze, glow in the dark mini gold (Nicole's favorite so far - so much so that she wants to create one in San Diego) and explored the bustling city.  Queenstown was hands down our favorite city in South Island New Zealand.  We really enjoyed the gondola and luge, Nicole and Lindsey the half price botox and Zane the arcade while Lindsey picked the most amazing cocktail with dried pineapple and candy floss. 

 

The next day we all truly enjoyed the Kjet boat ride for an hour doing 360 degree spins, speeding inches from the embankment, and over rocks and streams that only had a few inches of water.  The boat travels so fast it barely sits in the water at all. The weather was perfect and the water spray was refreshing instead of freezing cold.  After the boat trip Nicole and Zane went on a quest to get the best dessert in Queenstown at Cookie Time, and Grandpa and Grand-mim joined us to whisk Zane away for a sleepover and save him from our stop at The Winery where George, Lindsey, Nicole and I perfected our skills of Uno and Rummicube (just kidding, we got a little break from the games) and tasted wines and whiskey and enjoyed walking around Queenstown quietly.

 

 

Kjet Boat ride up the river

On our way to Wanaka we met up with Grandpa and Grand-mim to pick up Zane and explore their recommended winery, Carrick winery. There we lounged around on beanbags sipping our wine while Zane and Nicole climbed the tree above us.   We stopped off at Kiwi inflatable park, but chickened out as the water was too cold and instead decided to stop off for Nicole and indulge in some real fruit ice cream on the way to our house in Wanaka.  We decided to have some downtime and cooked at the house and only went out for a little bit to check out Puzzling World - where we really enjoyed the illusions and huge maze. 

 

We said our goodbyes to George and Lindsey and then all of us went over the mountain and to the airport, us for Singapore and George and Lindsey for the North Island.  Goodbye NZ!