...continued....

Soth Island Trip, Day 3:

This day started out with a hike in the Hooker Valley around Mt. Cook. It was a rainy and cloudy day, so Mt. Cook was good at hiding. Since we had all had to deconstruct our tents at 7am in the pouring rain that morning, for that night we all opted to upgrade to dorms. A bunch of us also went on a penguin tour. The first penguins we saw were yellow-eyed and at least 100 meters away... so you will not be too impressed with my camera's blob like representation of them ( it also didn't help that it was as windy as being in a wind tunnel).  Later that evening, we went to the harbor, took note of various distances to places, and then got dropped of in an outdoor blue penguin (which are less than a foot tall) arena to watch them get thrown into the rocks when returning to land from the sea.  They were very small, squalky, and cute, but had special little eyes that would cease to work if we took pictures of them.... so the stuffed ones are the best I could do (although one of the tour guides told us we had to stop laughing at the penguins becuase they were disturbed by loud noises....while speaking on a booming microphone).