How much wildlife can you see in 3 days?

Much like the Banks peninsula mentioned in a previous entry the Otago version is another set of ex-volcanos, again with a lot of pasture land on it but there was a lot more than sheep to keep us interested here. This place is an absolute haven for wildlife and therefore rocked my little world in a pretty big way.

Where to start...we saw 4 types of albatross including the 2nd biggest in the world with a wing span of greater than 3 metres (a Royal Albatross which makes it's home here and is the only 'mainland' colony in the world), 2 types of penguin, one of which is only found in NZ and very rare (yellow eyed penguin), seals, sea lions as many shags as you could imagine and all manner of other sea and wading birds and all in the wild, it was fantastic.

We started our time here visiting a place called Penguin Place, it's a sanctuary set up buy a farmer to protect the population of yellow eyed penguins that chose his land to nest on. They have immensely complicated labyrinth of mazes that must have taken an age to set up which take you to various hides from where you can see penguins nesting in their boxes at certain times of year. That is assuming they aren't out at sea feeding! They also provide some accommodation for the much more common little blue penguins. It's a great sanctuary and provides a rare opportunity to see these birds 'in their homes' with minimal disruption.

One of the oddest experiences I've ever had came the day after our trip to Penguin Place. We had been told a good place to go to see the little Blue penguins is just below where you can see the magnificent albatrosses wheel around and round the headland (see pic) so after a (relatively!) busy day looking for wading birds on the other side of the peninsula we arrived there just after night had pretty much fallen, that is to say later than we'd wanted. There were a few penguin spectators making their way back up to their cars as we had made our way down past all the many long slim wooden boxes which double as the penguin's homes and by the time we'd got to the viewing area we were down to seeing vague outlines of penguins. Or at least what our eyes thought might have been penguins. What was definitely unmistakable was the noise that these fellas and lasses make, I had read a bit about how they can become pests when they nest under houses and didn't think a lot of it. That came back to me in a rush as the squawks got more and more frequent and closer to us, I was unprepared to be frightened by creatures no more than 18" high but scared I was and Claire too. We promptly decided that this wasn't a place for us anymore and started walking carefully back to the van, but this was even hairier because we had come down via a path that took us stright down to the shore but going that way would've been too dangerous for us and the penguins so we had to go back via a twisty dirt track. We had head torches but felt they would've scared the bejeesus out of the penguins so decided against using them. It felt like a very long trail back to the car with the squawking coming from right under our feet at times! Thankfully we made it back to Steely unscathed apart from the clear mental scarring that emanates from this page! Not that I'd want to do it again but I'm glad I had the experience!!