Napier is nestled in Hawkes Bay, an area filled with wineries. In true New Zealand form, even the vineyards have been taken over by sheep.
While in Napier, we also spent the night at the Napier prison, which supposedly had been transformed into a hostel. Our impression was that it still felt like jail. It probably didn't help that we were the only travelers that evening. The rest of the inmates, oops I mean guests, were local native New Zealanders from a nearby island staying for six months during the grape picking season. The manager of the prison made a number of warnings to us to not use the public showers and explained that while almost all the guests were married men, there were a number of women who we would see socializing with them. This included a man with hatchet scars on his face and body, apparently administered by his wife after she found out he was picking up more than just grapes. We weren't sure why she felt the need to explain this particular local custom of infidelity, but we were sufficiently nervous when the sun went down.
Lots of sporadic rain throughout our trip has allowed us to see sights like this from the road. This was shot while driving through the front windshield.
After a night in Wellington, we ventured to the South Island and headed straight for a small town called Oamaru (for some reason rhymes with 'kangaroo'). Oamaru is famous for their little blue penguin colony.
These penguins weigh about 2 pounds, and only emerge from the ocean at dusk. They climb up this steep hill, then wait in groups called rafts before darting across to their nests. They're known to be crabby little suckers, and bore a striking resemblance to those sneaky mafioso penguins in 'Madagascar'.
One roadside tourist stop to break up the driving featured these alien-looking smooth boulders jutting out of the cliff walls and laying in the sand along the beach. This is supposed to look like I'm Atlas, shouldering the world, but it looks more like I'm just relaxing, and leaning up against it.
In Dunedin, a large Scottish-settled town along the southeast coast, Tiff and I toured the Cadbury chocolate factory, complete with many free chocolate samples, and a gift shop where we picked up another 10 pounds of chocolate or so. Frighteningly, we don't have all that much left by now. I blame Tiff for eating it all, she claims I ate it all, and we both feel a little better.
New Zealand also brews some fantastic beers, none of which we'd ever tried before. Also in Dunedin is the Speight's brewery, which ends in a nice little pub for free sampling of six of their fine beers. Don't ever leave me behind the bar with the beer taps running. It's not a good idea. Luckily Tiff was too busy picking me up off the floor and carrying me home to take any compromising photos. Free chocolate and free beer; now that was a fantastic day!
In the town of Te Anau, outside of Milford Sound, we stayed at one of my favorite motels so far, for obvious reasons. I practiced my "Matrix" moves for the next sequel and am ready for the casting call.
The beauty of Milford Sound was a joy to experience and we took many deep breaths of clean crisp air, to get all remnants of India dust out of our lungs.
The vast grandeur of Milford Sound is such that even these falls, which are three times the height of Niagara, are dwarfed by the size of the surrounding mountains. 
Large bottle nose dolphins swam alongside our boat and even performed a few jumps and tricks for our entertainment.
Some braver passengers went on deck to feel the brunt of a 50-story high waterfall crashing down with icy waters on their heads. Tiff and I remained safely inside the boat, and tried to figure out what was wrong with these people.
Tiff's favorite: a cute little seal posed for us on a rock.
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