Penguins!!! loads of em!!!
Trip Start
Apr 20, 2007
1
40
47
Trip End
Nov 2007
Otago peninsular,
New Zealand
Sunday, September 16, 2007
laughing at the attempts of a mazda full of students trying to do it,
it really is very steep. we left Jucy at the bottom and set off on foot
_after_ picking up our certificate (very trusting of them i think).
but then we travelled from Dunedin for an afternoon out on the Otago Peninsular, it was another one of those journeys in NZ, it's such a beautiful country that everywhere has nice places to pull in at the side of the road to take photos of the amazing views. so it took us at least twice as long to get anywhere as it should have done...
...arriving quite late in the day at the albatross sanctuary, we realised that we had a) not enough money and b) not enough time to see the albatrii _and_ the yellow eyed penguins. in a battle of cuteness; the little flightless birdies that have had countless movies made about em waddling about, sometimes falling over versus the giant seagull with massive long wings and a very very windy homestead (we were scared that Jucy was going to fall off the cliff), it was no real contest.
penguins are ace.
we loved it, we had to wear very stupid looking rubber macs and follow a lady around who at points seemed not to know what she was talking about but we saw some, no, not some... loads of yellow eyed penguins (the rarest penguins in the world, as they only live around NZ) and some blue penguins too!! they live in the habitat the lovely folks there try and keep predator free for them, we saw them coming out of the sea, waddling across the beach (at one point, one of them fell over, much to our delight) and up the very very steep hill to their lovely little houses, they didn't seem to be too bothered by us, even when the stupid swedish woman started asking questions by shouting at the lady... gah! we got left behind cos we were taking photos of the cute little couple that were just outside the hide (at some point we will get round to uploading the photos on here, but for now there are a few on Aymi's flickr www.flickr.com/photos/a_of_doom) and spent a few moments panicking that we were going to be left in the remote hills as everyone else was shipped back to the centre, but we found em (using the location device of the stupid swedish woman's voice).
we rushed back to catch the start of the capoera festival that was happening on the university campus, and after a shaky start where it appeared that folks really had no idea what they were supposed to do, it got good and the 2 brazillian blokes were absolutely amazing, doing stuff we'd only ever seen in animation. we stayed until you could hear our bellies rumbling over the music but then we had to go...
feeling good about ourselves for getting out and about to see wildlife _and_ some localness, we congratulated each other with a bag of fish and chips (known locally as fush and chups cos they mangle vowels) - the one bad thing about NZ is that they don't have vinegar to put on chips... so we got some white vinegar, similar, but not quite right, and in a giant bottle. then we went in search of the glow-worms.
