Our tale is almost done. Only a couple of days left. For Google mappers we drove today from Cromwell in Central Otago to Dunedin on the Otago coast and went for a drive up the Otago Peninsula just south of Dunedin.
Our string of nice days ended. It wasn't horrible but it was gray and overcast with drizzles and not too warm. The drive down was fairly uneventful and took most of the morning. We checked into our next bed and breakfast which is just on the base of the Otago Peninsula. It's another killer location with two bedrooms and a sitting room and a view of the Pacific Ocean.
Then we went on to the main event of the day, a visit to Penguin Place. Penguin Place is a privately run, self-funding wildlife sanctuary providing a habitat for the rare yellow eye penguin. The way it is set up is they have blinds in place through out the sanctuary that are reached by means of camouflaged trenches so one can get extremely close to the birds without disturbing them. You are only allowed to go in with a guide and all the proceeds of the guided trip go to maintaining the sanctuary.
Once again our weather luck held up as it did not drip a drop the whole 90 minutes we were out. We successfully saw both the yellow-eye penguins and the blue penguins that also nest in this area. We saw ducks with ducklings, cormorants, and mutton birds (small sea birds who migrate incredibly long distances). It was really, really neat. And we got a nice walk out in the hills by the beach to boot.
Tomorrow it is on to Christchurch.
2 comments:
That sounds like a great wildlife sanctuary. They're really thought about how to show people the animals without disturbing them. Cool!
Julia loves penguins. I'm sure she would've loved to have seen that.
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