Bimbling around Otago

We left Blenheim and were sucked straight into another winery in the next county.  I was driving so I had to make do with poncy Organic cola and lunch. Chan selflessly tried enough for both of us, though.

On the drive we happened across a fur seal colony.  They were a bit of a timesink to be honest. You'd think you'd seen them all then then you'd notice that the boulders nearby were another dozen of them. Also, their barks sound like the wailing of the damned, which really harshes my vibe.

So the next stop was Oamaru – a town with far too many vowels given that they are the Kiwis’ natural enemy. It is a town that is big on vintage.  Neo-classical buildings abound and antique shops are aplenty.

What was a big draw for Chan though was the presence of the nearby penguin colonies.  There are two main colonies: one of Blue Penguins and one of Yellow-eyed Penguins.  If penguins gonna represent, they gotta wear their colours, you dig?



As we have seen the definitive colony of Blue penguins on a previous trip to Phillip Island in Australia, Chan tasked us with getting up at Oh-my-sweet-baby-Jesus O’clock to try and see one or two of the 15 yellow-eyed penguins who live on Bushy Beach.  Last year was hard on the local Yellow-eyes, as disease and other unfortunatenesses had depleted their numbers – hence the only remaining 7 breeding pairs plus change. That, combined with their natural disinclination toward people, means you have to spot them from a hide on the hill.  They get up at sunrise and go fishing for the day, before coming ashore at some point in the evening and hiding in their burrows, meaning you have to catch them on the way out. I was pessimistic about our chances -especially as this was rearing season so half the penguins would be home watching the kids- and Chan was going to throw a right tantrum if we didn’t see anything, even though this was her idea.  Thankfully, we caught a couple of the late risers.  Blurry, unprepared penguin action shots ahoy:

 

Apparently the water was as cold as it looked, if this guy’s reaction is anything to go by:

One rather different place that Oamaru has is the Steampunk HQ  - a museum/installation filled with various artefacts done in the ‘Steampunk’ style.  For the uninitiated, Steampunk is a genre of fiction, art or dress-up (sorry, Cosplay) which is best described as science-fiction from a Victorian perspective.  So airships, trains, flamboyant vacuum-tube electrical devices and steam power feature heavily. So Jules Verne and HG Wells would give you the right idea.

We saw some weird shit.

On the drive from Oamaru to Dunedin, we stopped to look at the Moeraki Boulders, which I artfully managed to photograph while keeping the legions of dickheads doing yoga poses on the rocks out of shot.

That's no moon

Dunedin (which is Edinburgh in Gaelic, by the way) is good for some ridiculously photogenic landscape.   We took a drive up to the Otago Peninsula, on which it resides.

Mind you, nothing was open again for dinner, so we ended up cooking for ourselves before my hungrygrump hit critical.

Since this post is more pretty pictures than substance, I'll mention the following day when we were driving to Milford Sound.  We pulled into the sensibly named Nugget Point, home of a prominent and still-active lighthouse which looks down on the rocks which were historically a significant hazard to small vessels to and from the nearby Clutha river.  It makes for some good photos:

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben Pinguine und Robben gesehen.  Wir besucht auch eine seltsame Museum.