After a night in Dunedin I was on the road again, there were some places I really wanted to check out along the coast. The first place I stopped was at the Moeraki boulders. These are some spherical boulders formed millions of years ago under the sea which have now been revealed on the beach at Moeraki and are pretty cool to see. It was only a brief stop (they are what they are and after a few pics I felt I'd had all they had to offer).

From here I headed north to Oamaru to see Penguins - Oamaru is a pretty big town on the coast, but south of the town are 2 separate penguin colonies one of yellow eyed penguins and one of the little blue penguins. I made a bit of an uniformed judgement error in my hostel choice and stayed at chillawhile a hostel at the complete wrong end of town (I quite liked the name) and ended up adding about 2-3 kms in each direction to my journey to see the penguins - ah well it was a nice hostel and the owner was really nice so it's fine! I walked first of all out to the yellow eyed penguin colony - these little guys can be seen coming in around 2 hours before sunset. It was a slow start and I was getting a bit worried I wouldn't see any - but I wasn't disappointed - at about7.30 they started coming in. It's really awesome watching animals in the wild going about their business especially when they are as funny/cute as penguins! So after a while of watching them I headed back towards town to watch the blue penguins come in. These penguins are nocturnal and only come ashore when the sun has set. As it was a full moon they were slow to start as it wasn't quite as dark as normal. The really cool thing about these penguins is that they come back to land in rafts of between 20 and 80 penguins - it really cool to see a wave hit the shore and 25 penguins emerge from the foam! They then waddle and jump up the rocks until they reach a bit of road they have to cross. It was really funny to watch because at this point they become cautious because they are out in the open, they would pause and wait for one of them to make a break for it. When one did - they all went as fast as they could - usually at least one would fall! As I am a big fan of penguins watching these little birds make their way home was a real treat! I made my way back to my hostel and the following day I chilled in the morning before heading up towards Christchurch!

There was one other significant event in Oamaru - I made a big decision and replaced my faithful and well-worn walking boots. We had been through so much together, they had been to every music festival since V2008 not to mention, all the hikes I'd done both at home (snowden and Erigal) and away - these boots had been to Machu Pichu and had stood on Africa's highest point. But I guess they had brought me as far as they could - they no longer had very much grip and the right one actually had a hole in the sole which was less than helpful in the rain - so I bit the bullet and bought some new one and left my old faithful ones behind! (moment's silence please)