Tuesday 24th November - Penguins

Handley:
Early start - not intentional I misready my watch and thought it was 8am when infact it was 7am so we got up an hour earlier than necessary!

After a lesuirely breakfast we jumped in the car and headed over to the Otago peninsula to check out some Yellow Eyed Penguins and to hopefully catch a glimpse of some Albatross.

The drive out to the peninsula was pretty good and the views were yet again spectacular!  We arrived at Penguin Place (imaginatively named!) and started our tour.  The penguin reservation is essentially a private beach in which a number of trenchs have been dug to allow visitors to wander around looking at the penguins without freaking them out.

We got some lovely views of these cute creatures - although the shots on the camera didn't come out great.

After viewing the penguins we headed 5 mins up the coast to Taiaroa Head with the hope of seeing Albatross as they have the only mainland colony up there.

We had our packed lunch in the car and watched the sky - nothing but seagulls flew past.

We walked along the cliff front - nothing but seagulls.

Now there is a visitors centre, where you can pay $40 tohave a guided trip right up to the colony, but we couldn't justify spending that especially when we hoped to see them for free in the car park :)

We heard on the cheapskate grapevine in the car park that the visitor centre had a cafe and that for the cost of a coffee you had a really good chance of seeing the birds flying up from the colony.  We headed in and loitered in the cafe - nothing but seagulls.

Back outside the centre we saw a path that looked like it might get closer to the colony - for free!

We drove the car down and parked up and started wandering towards a gate marked Albatross Colony - authourised personnel only, we had no thoughts of breaking in don't worry, but we hoped to peer through the fence.

As we wandered over to the gate we saw something move on the rocks next to us.... two HUGE male sealions!!  They saw us and we now saw them, they were taking far too much interest in us and as they started flopping over we made a quick and quiet exit to the safety of the car!

Having been chased off by sealions we sat in the car looking at the sky - BINGO - Albatross - finally we'd seen one!

Now satisfied we headed around the peninsula and went to Sandymount hoping to have a walk around, only to be turned away as it was lambing season.

We headed to Sandfly Bay and saw amazing beaches and dunes and yet more massive sealions, but these ones were sleeping so we could creep past them!

I'd love to have included pictures in this blog, but the camera battery died after a couple of poor shots of penguins - gutted!

Back to the hostel for 5pm ish and a spot of lunch before heading out to the cinema.  A cool little place next to the town hall, there was only 1 screen and a total of 56 seats - yes I counted them!

Watched "An Education" good film, really enjoyed it, probably helped that we watched it with 2 other people in the smallest cinema I've ever been in!

More planned for tomorrow - can't wait.