Kingsgate Brydone Oamaru

... going to stay the first night, but ended up in a Van park in Oamaru for the night. We went down to the cliffs to try and see some Yellow eyed penguins but only saw one trudging along the beach that a local was nice enough to point out. Afterwards we grabbed some awesome pizza in town and bunked down for the night.

... It sits right on the ocean and has a wonderful downtown historic area. It has the best preserved historic buildings in the country (according to a brochure) but I agree. So for the next 4 nights we hung out with Elaine and Merv. They live on 5 archers and have an amazing home. They grow apples, pears, lemons, all kinds of berries, a whole field of cherry trees, an entire garden filled with everything you could think of and they even ...

... sign near a track leading to the river and lake which said 'please wash tyres - we do not want didymo here'. At the time, we had no idea what this meant but subsequently I heard a programme on the radio discussing the problems of 'rock snot' - aka 'didymo' - aka 'didymosphenia geminata', with which you are all no doubt familiar! Rock snot is such an appealing name and probably ...

... and a very posh restaurant, outside of which we sat drinking coffee and eating some fresh cherries and the best carrot cake ever! Whilst doing so, we spotted what we thought may have been dolphins (although they didn't come into the bay far enough for us to confirm this photographically). Deciding that the wildlife spotting luck was with us that day, we headed up to the lighthouse where it is ...

We wake to see low cloud blanketing the valley covering the tops of the mountains. We had intended to do a walk that involved climbing high up to a tarn but that is clearly not on. We drive up to the head of the Tasman valley to Mount Cook Village. Here there is New Zealand's best known hotel, The Hermitage, parked like a grey-blue battleship, dominating the settlement. A bit further on ...

... verbreitesten Pinguinarten (und ich hatte sie auch schon einmal auf Kangaroo Island in Australien gesehen). Ausserdem kommt der beste Kaese Neuseelands aus Oamaru, habe mir in dem Cafe der Kaesefabrik die Kaeseplatte (sehr guter Schimmelkaese, der meistausgezeichneste in NZ) und einen Kaesekuchen (superb) gegoennt, puh, war ich voll:-) Gruss Ralf P.S. Sperm Whale Fun Fact Sperm Whales have the largest brain on earth, it can weigh 9kg.

... can keep track of their movements, their journeys and their young while also treating sick penguins and providing them with a safe, natural habitat which in turn allows members of the public to watch them. Great stuff indeed. The penguins have free reign, naturally, so 2 hours later, while we all dissipated away back to our hotels and B & B's we were asked to check under and around our cars in the car park for any penguins that may be wandering ...

... Indian' - it's a good movie if you haven't seen it and tells of his trips to the Bonneville salt flats to set records at quite an advanced age. There's an exhibition at the museum and we are informed that the unrestored specimen in the hardware store is the bike itself!The Catlins is a string of tiny towns - but in their heyday in the first half of the 20th century they were sizeable logging settlements connected by a railway. There is now a collection of minor sights ...

... gaan samen uit eten en komen samen terug. De Yellow Eyed daarentegen zijn erg op zichzelf. Er mag geen ander nest in de buurt zijn en ze zullen zeker niet met zijn allen gaan eten.<br>Het verschil tussen de landing hier en die ene Pinguin die ik in Dunedin aan land zag komen was dus ook groot.<br>In raften (zoals de groepen genoemd worden) van zo'n 20-50 pinguins tegelijk, kon je ze in de verre zee als een soort zwerm bijen al aan zien komen. Langzaamaan kwamen ze ...