Today we had a lie in - well anything would be a lie in after yesterday. The shops were open today after being closed on the first and second of January - they really believe in having Xmas and New Year breaks - some smaller businesses are shut until 6th January - at home they would be open and trying to entice people to the sales! My mission today was to buy a new pair of boots before our 4 day trek on the Milford Track as my old ones sprung a leak on the trek back from Masons Bay. We quickly found a couple of likely shops and had several pairs to choose from - quite a few were in the sales so that was good - we ended up both buying a pair of waterproof Keens - they fitted well and should be a good long lasting investment. We kept them on for the rest of the day to ensure they were properly broken in - no problems at all they fitted like gloves - especially good for me as I had bruised a toe in a night-time excursion to the loo - I had stubbed it on the luggage stand - despite I have to say putting the light on to help guide my path and avoid such pain - well that tactic clearly failed!
With boots 'in the bag' we headed back to Fletcher lodge to sort out a few things and then head off to the Orokonui ecosanctuary which, through local benefactors, is re establishing a predator free sanctuary for New Zealand, especially Otago, plant and animal life - we had lunch in their new ecofriendly visitor centre followed by a superb 2 hour tour with Sue, a resident naturalist, who explained the vegetation, helped us spot birds - riflemen, tomtits, bellbirds, tui, grey warbler and brown creeper - took us to see the endemic and endangered tuitara (today's photo) which they have in an enclosure, the New Zealand skink and the endemic long finned eel - who live to @100 - she had eaten all the short finned, but less vulnerable, eels before they realised she wasn't also a short finned eel!!
Amongst the plants we even got to see the national emblem of New Zealand - the silver tree fern. Just as we got back to the main building it started to rain - what timing. We said our thanks to Sue, had a cup of tea and headed off to the Otago peninsular as we wanted to see the return of the little blue penguins at the albatross centre. Next stop though was Portabello and a pub Hildegard had recommended for fish and chips - she was right - the blue cod in beer batter, salad and chips were excellent and we topped it off with a caramel ice cream sundae. Replete we headed off to the albatross centre but sadly found that the penguin tour was fully booked - unheard of according to our host - but it is the end of the locals new year holiday so the demand was high. Never mind a little sad we set off back to our luxury b&b and decided it was fate as we sorted out our luggage for an early start back to Queenstown tomorrow.