Day 66 - Dunedin - Sun 4th Jan

Managed to set the alarm clock correctly for two days running now and made the bus to leave Queenstown and head to Dunedin. We stopped at Moeraki Boulders on the way through for the obligatory bus break and photo stop.

The boulders are some perfectly round natural rocks on the shore of the beach that are believed to have been formed on the sea bed about 60 millon years ago, however there are some maori legends about how the rocks were formed too.

We arrived in Dunedin about 2pm and I had booked myself on a wildlife tour in the afternoon. We got picked up at 3pm and didn't get back until 10pm so it was quite a long afternoon / evening. First of all we spent a while driving along the Dunedin peninsular and around the inlets with the guide pointing out various bird species such as oyster catchers and herons (nothing paricularly spectacular at this point although I the spoon-billed herons were quite interesting).

Then we pulled up at a private farm which was right on the coast and had a private beach. The wildlife tour company had an agreement with the farmer over the land and they were now managing it as a private sanctuary.

When we arrived at the top of the cliff the guide had spotted a sealion down on the beach that was heading (very slowly!) into the sea, so we tried to run down to the beack as quickly as possible to get a good look at it. Unfortunately by the time we had got down there it had already gone in the water.

But about 2 minutes later we got a look at the main event - penguins! We watched one come out of the water and slowly edge its way accross the beach towards the grass edges. They were Yellow Eyed penguins which are the 4th largest species, but still very small!

We were there for about an hour and half and got to see loads of penguins in that time. The wildlife company have been working for a few years at trying to encourage more penguins there by helping making good nesting areas and obviously mainintaing it as a private beach is really important. They have set up a couple of viewing hides for you to watch from so you can get quite close to them.

After that we headed back up the hill to the other side of the cliff to look at a seal colony. Again they had set up hides for you to view from and there were loads of seal pubs playing right beneath us.

Then it was off to the albatross colony. Albatross are the largest flying sea bird in the world, with a wing span about the same size as a bus. They are also about the same size as a condor, which I had seen in the Andes (who wins the largest flyign land bird title), so I've been doing quite well on the large bird front.

We only managed to see one albatross but it flew right over our heads quote low which was amazing to see.

After that we had an unscheduled stop at a beach as the guide said that she thought she had spotted a sealion there when we past it earlier so we went back to see if it was still there. It was still there, and was absolutely enormous. It was fast asleep at first, but eventually humoured us by sitting up and having a stretch. Then he was quite funny to watch as he obviously had an itch that he was trying to scratch and couldn't get and then decided to bury his face in sand.

It had been a very enjoyable afternoon and I could have sat on the beach watching those penguins for hours!