Dunedin (Otago Peninsula)

After checking the camp’s own weather station, I left Fairlie heading towards Dunedin.

I also found a couple of nice mushrooms, straight out of a Noddy book.

 

I had been to Timaru so I bypassed the town, I intended to stop at Oamaru but realised as I was driving through that it was not worth stopping.

I saw a sign for the  Moeraki Boulders so decided to investigate.

Nothing like a shag on the beach!

 

It turned out to be a load of balls!

 

 

After this digression I continued to Dunedin and booked in at a local Top 10 camp site, all the sites are very expensive but very nice, a lot better than the Aussie camp sites but they do have to accommodate more inside facilities because of the climate, the kitchens are excellent, the last site I was in had 3 inductive duel hot plates and this camp is larger and has 8 duel ring halogen plates built in to the worktops as well as ovens toasters microwaves etc. The next day I had a quick look at the city, then drove out to the end of the Otago Peninsula to the Albatross centre.

Dunedin is located at the bottom of a large inlet and is a very beautiful city.

  

Albatross nest around the promontory of the peninsula under this lighthouse and unfortunately are not visible unless one coughs up yet another $50 to go to the hide. I feel from a tourist view point New Zealand is even more expensive that Australia, almost everything I have wanted to visit has cost a minimum of $30 more often $50. On the peninsula there is Lanach Castle, the only castle in New Zealand but that was $30 to get in, fine if I had wanted to spend the day there but I only wanted a quick look and a couple of photos.

The visit to the hide was interesting, unfortunately it was glassed in and not very good for photos.

A young chick, 6 months old and not yet fledged, they don’t leave the nest until they are 9 months old.

   

There is a camera next to this nest and the nest has been built on a set of scales so that a constant watch can be kept on the weight of the birds.

The birds come back every 2 years to the same nest so the researchers had plenty of time to rebuild this nest with all the electronic monitoring equipment they needed. 

This is Mark our guide standing in front of a scale model of an albatross, this give some idea of the size of these beautiful birds.

 

 

 

A red beaked gull

There are some spoonbills on the bush in the distance, I should have manually focused he camera!

A sea lion swimming below.

 

These 3 ducks could have come straight off of Hilda Ogdens wall.

I enjoyed my day on the Otago peninsula so I decided to spend more time there, I booked into the Portobello camp site, tonight will be my third night I have had 2 nice days but today it is raining.

I walked down to Sandfly Beach hoping to see yellow eyed penguins but no luck.

My first close up view of a sea lion, we watched it for about 5 minutes no movement at all, we thought it was dead.

Then it waved to us and went back to sleep. These beasts are huge this one is a lot bigger than me.

I spent hours on Allans beach which is not far from the camp site waiting and hoping to see penguins, the only one I found was a scruffy moulting blue penguin hiding in the rocks, not quite what I had in mind, maybe I will get a chance later on the west coast.

Some long legged birds not sure yet what they are.

While I was sat with the camera waiting for happy feet to come out of the sea there were 2 sleeping sea lions on the beach.

Then this arrived.

He went to the first of the sleeper and kept harassing him until there was a lot of barking and he took the hint and cleared off to the next one to annoy him. This one just turned over and ignored it. Having had no success with them he thought he would come and annoy me, so I had to clear off to another part of the beach.

 

Very disappointed he went back into the sea. normally they take no notice of people, later that evening further along the beach there must have been about 20 of them all playing in the water.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the aquarium which is also a research station.

I thought these were good.

 

I was lucky I got there at feeding time, this only happens twice a week, this crab is not so lucky he is going to be fed but to the octopus.

The octopus enjoyed him.

 

There were some open ponds with a variety of small creatures in that did not seem to move but if you looked away and came back they all seemed to be in different positions.