To the South Island - 2nd Dec

Our early flight from Wellington (North Island) to Dunedin (South Island) was cancelled and was replaced by two separate flights – one to Christchurch and then from there to Dunedin. It ended up only delaying us by 2 hours but “no worries”, as the locals say.

We left Wellington with blue skies and early 20 Celsius warmth and arrived in Dunedin to dark clouds and jumper wearing temperatures. We picked up the car and went straight for some lunch in Dunedin. We then went and checked into our B&B and got straight back in our car for a trip to the Otago Peninsula a local wildlife hotspot.

There is a strong Scottish Heritage to Dunedin

After being relieved of NZ$90 (~£45) Emma and I were part of the last tour of the day at 'Penguin Place'. This involved being rushed from one viewpoint to another in the quest to see the Yellow Penguin. It was quite a sight seeing feeding parent penguins appear from the surf and begin a waddle across the length of the beach to their nests.

We had forgotten our binoculars and so this is how it
actually looked. Can you see the penguin?

Upon reaching the nest the penguin will regurgitate the fish they had swallowed from their 12 or so hours at sea and feed their young whilst the other parent clocks off from protecting the young from predators and heads for the sea to catch more fish.

"I am sure my nest was here when I left..."

After an exciting 90 minutes we got back in the car and headed for the albatross centre at the end of the peninsula. Apparently this is the only place in the world where these magnificent birds nest on the 'mainland'. I say apparently as we baulked at the $60 entry fee (discounted from $90 as the last tour of the evening) to see the nests and so just hung about outside the front of the centre being treated to a spectacular flying display by a number of birds.



The five minute video we took is just as poor quality as the photos



Seeing them fly next to the seagulls that also populated the area really demonstrated how phenomenally big as well as how graceful in flight they are.



An Albatross leaving the mainland; they can travel up to
190,000km a year.



The Peninsula



We headed back to Dunedin and went for a curry in town before returning to the B&B and chatting to a couple of other guests and Lyndon the owner over coffee.