Our drive to Dunedin was a nice one, probably about 4 hours or so through mostly rolling hills, and we arrived a little before 2 PM. We were both hungry, but we wanted to get our bearings and find our lodging (the Dunedin Holiday Park) first. Dunedin was founded by the Scottish and boasts a rather unique Octagon for a city center.
The city is essentially laid out like a grid, so we had a pretty easy time finding the information center and then finding our holiday park. We were staying in Cabin 51 for the night, which was considerably nicer than the prison cell of the previous night. Of course the sun was shining, so maybe that helped.Once we were settled, we headed into Dunedin to found some food, which I did by way of a delicious Turkish lamb shish kebab. After the eats, I walked around the city a bit, checking out some of the wonderful architecture and soaking in the suns rays. I entertained the idea of taking the Speight's (rather prominent NZ beer) but decided that since the tour lasted 90 minutes we might have trouble achieving our ultimate Dunedin goal which was to look for yellow-eyed penguins. After meeting back up with Amy, we headed a little north of the city to view the World's steepest street, Baldwin Street. We walked up to the top of Baldwin Street, trying to capture in photographs what we could feel in our calves. As a traffic engineer I was pretty interested to see just how steep this road was; in layman's terms, the road was steep!
Our quest for world records fulfilled we set about viewing some near extinct yellow-eyed penguins, which required that we drive back through Dunedin and out onto the Otago Peninsula. The drive out to the viewing beach was fantastic: steep cliffs overlooking Dunedine with sheep and ocean views worked in for good measure. A couple photo stops later and we were parking the car ready to embark on our penguin odyssey. We walked from the car, through a herd of sheep and onto the beach bordering Sandfly Bay. We passed a good deal of people heading away from the beach and were a bit worried that we were too late, but pushed on ahead. At the far end of the beach hides had been constructed so that you could view the penguins without them seeing you. Penguins are very shy and will not come ashore if they can see danger, so the hides were built in the dunes to allow people to view the penguins while still allowing the penguins to feel safe.
From the hide we were immediately able to see two penguins on the rocks bordering the beach, as well as a number of seals or sea lions (both inhabit the beach and we were a little too far to really identify the creatures). The penguins were simply basking in the last rays of the sun and we were unsure if we would see anything more, so we headed back to the beach to get in the car and get home before dark. On our way down the beach I spotted what I took to be a duck in the water bobbing in the waves. I took a couple pictures and as I was ready to dismiss the bird and head for home, out walked another penguin! I was maybe 20 yards down the shore and got a couple good pictures before alerting Amy to the bird. We decided to head back to the hide and see if any other penguins emerged as there was still a touch of daylight left. We saw our fourth penguin emerge from the ocean onto the rocks, joining the two that we had been watching for the previous hour. Once again we felt as though the time to leave was right and once again we were wrong as we were stopped a couple yards out of the hide and treated to yet another penguin returning from a long day of swimming and fishing. I took a couple more pictures and then we made the last move for the car. Despite the dying light, we saw our sixth and final penguin of the night and then made our way back to the car and off in search of dinner.
Seeing the yellow-eyed penguins is not a terribly common sight and I was thrilled to witness their wobbly movements in person. Dunedin seemed to be a pretty fun city and having an attraction like wild yellow-eyed penguins definitely makes stopping there a must in my travel book. This was a lot of writing for one day, and as I am back in Christchurch after we completed the drive home from Dunedin and the time is now 2AM, I think that I will post all of this later today and catch up with the end of my travels sometime in the not too distant future.
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