Last night was pretty scary going to sleep in our
eccentrically dectorated room. It’s absolutely amazing, but sleeping in it is a
bit scary and the compost toilet put Ali off of going to the toilet. I must admit, I was a little scared too,
especially as there aren’t locks on the doors and it kept swinging open and
shut and creaking all night. We had breakfast with the same English couple we
had dinner with last night.
With no real plans for the day, we decided to go where the
wind took us. The first stop was Maori art drawings on the limestone cliffs. If
it wasn’t behind bars and had a board saying what they were, I would have
completely missed them. Sadly, many of them have been gouged out the cliff. Our
next stop was to the elephant rocks, and you can see why, they look like
elephants feet. We were now in the village of earthquakes, so travelled on to
see their geological formation, mainly a whale fossil in the rock.
Onto Oamaru, our place for the night. Sadly, because it’s
new years day, everything was closed, including the cheese factory we wanted to
see. Instead, we sat outside and counted down to British New Year, sang auld
lang syne again, and called mum and dad. All I could hear was fireworks in the
distance and air horns. We found the Empire backpackers which is right in the
centre of town, and went off for a wander around every shop and café which was
closed.
Oamaru is incredibly quaint, it’s like stepping back to
Britain with Union Jacks on the buildings, the Victorian tea shop, amazingly
beautiful buildings which we wandered around. It looked like a living museum,
that was closed for the bank holiday. Lunch in a Victorian looking café, then
onto the blue penguin colony for a personal tour around the nest boxes and
commentary from a guide, just for the two of us. We saw a sea lion on the rocks
that we stared at for a good long while, then back to the hostel for some rest.
Back out to view the yellow eyed penguins going ashore for
the night. At Bushy Beach we saw 5 penguins going in an out of the sea, drying
off and staring up at all of us gazing at them. There were so many people at
the lookout point but we got a great view. Then onto the Oamaru blue penguin
colony to watch them go back on shore for the night. We sat in the premium
seats, closer to the slope the penguins walk up. I will never understand the
cheek of some people, while we waited for an hour to get the best seats, they
just came right before the start and took right in front of our view!
The penguins start to come in on ‘rafts’, groups of
penguins. A group being over 50 penguins in lots of cases. As they approach,
you see their heads bobbing up and down, then a big wave pushes them up the
beach and then they are on their feet and move up the slope. One brave penguin
goes towards their houses first, then they all waddle behind in waves. Not all
go, some stay in the beach preening and oiling their feathers. We stayed for a
few hours, watching the rafts come in, their blue feathers shining in the
moonlight. They were so cute waddling to their houses.
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