Yesterday, we drove from Akoura to Oamaru. It wasn't a very long drive (only 3 hours), but we did quite a bit of stopping along the way. Per our traditional vacationing protocol, Liz and I did some light house hunting. We spotted one in Akoura that had been been moved to its present location several years ago. These lighthouses are endangered species and we are glad that they are being protected. I'll have to post the light house picture when I upload all the pictures.
Also, we stopped at 2 cheese factories. One was on our way out from Akoura, which Liz thought was a bit disappointing due to its lack of curds for tasting and its limited supply of samples. The other was in Oamaru, and was a little bit better. The cheeses were fresh and tasty. We'll probably have to buy some on our way out of town.
The highlight of yesterday was viewing the Penguin colony that came in to Oamaru after a day of feeding. There are 2 types of penguins in this area. One is a yellowed eyed penguin, which is a medium sized penguin that spends the evening on a southern beach in town. You can watch them come in in the evening and gather on the beach below. Unfortunately, we only saw one of these guys since we had to leave for our tour of the Blue Penguin colony on the northern side of town. There is a protected area for viewing these penguins. The facilities have viewing bleachers and a walkway around the penguin nesting grounds. Each penguin couple even has their own man made nesting box, which they seem to enjoy a lot more than the open air.
We sat and waited until dusk at about 9:30 when the first raft of penguins could be seen floating in. After hanging out in the bay for a long time, there was suddenly a flurry of activity and 64 penguins started swimming towards shore. The waves crashed on the rocks and as it receded, there were little penguins all over the rocks. They waddled their ways up the rocks to the flat viewing area. Then, as they gathered their courage, they raced across the flat area towards the fence and back to their nesting grounds. Some of the penguins stumbled on the race, and others tripped up by the 2 inch high boulders in the path. But they made it quickly past our viewing area do the safety of cover underneath the raised walkway, where they started preening and shaking themselves dry. After a beautification session, they were off to their boxes.
30 minutes later another couple of rafts of penguins came in. They do this every 20-30 minutes and while we were there, there were about 201 penguins that made it to shore in our area. One of the penguins was flapping his wings so hard that it looked like he was trying to fly up to the nesting grounds. Another penguin tried to jump onto a 7 inch high box and instead hit himself right in the face with the side of the box. The penguins were the comedic highlight of the trip so far.