This morning I had planned to attempt a three way Skype video chat with Pete, Kim and girls, dad and Jen and myself, the only flaw was that I had managed to pick the only location and accommodation in the whole of NZ (really the whole of NZ) without internet! To be fair we were out on a beautiful tiny little peninsula miles from the main city but even so, I had managed to get internet everywhere else in NZ just not here. It turned out that the local cafe had internet connection (great) but when I got to the cafe not only did they not know how to use the PC but they also didn’t know what WIFI was! Not looking good is it? I texted everyone to explain my predicament but everyone was all really geared up for it and ready to chat that I decided to head back into the city, a thirty min drive along very windy, narrow, with the sea right there roads, to try and get a connection. Now in the UK we can’t now drive while talking on our mobiles, I wonder how they would take to what I was doing. I was driving, I expect too fast for the roads, with the laptop open on the passenger seat with the mouse positioned on the ‘search for networks’ so I was able to click on it while driving to see when I was picking up a signal!! Not ideal I know but in the end it worked. I made it into town and parked up outside a backpackers and tapped into their signal! Because it had taken so long to get there I managed only a 10 min chat with everyone and as it turned out you can only talk on a conference call and not video chat, oh well it’s all a learning curve right?
I then had to hot foot it back to the peninsula to meet with Peter at 10am, at this point though it was already gone 10, luckily, amazingly, he was still there when I got back so after a most welcome spot of breakfast we headed off for more wildlife experiences!
Our first stop was the Royal Albatross centre; these birds have the largest wing span of all the Albatross at 3 metres across which is really very huge. Fortunately I had seen them when I was in Kaikoura swimming with dolphins because at the Albatross centre we just about managed to see three and that was from a huge distance away. We had paid to go on a tour from the centre and visit the colony and we both thought we were going to see so much more than we did, oh well, lets hope the penguin experience is better.
The little blue penguin
There are several species of penguin in NZ and last night we saw the Blue penguins which are the smallest, now we are heading off to see the rarest penguin, the yellow eyed penguin.
Straight away this tour has a much nicer feel to it, it’s smaller and not so commercialised (always a good thing). The colony is on a local farmers land and he’s constructed a series of tunnels and walkways to make it easier for us to view the penguins and less obtrusive for the penguins in their natural habitat. We saw 4 penguins which was great, 44 would have been better and 144 even better but it’ not a great season for viewing them really so apparently we were lucky to see the ones we did.
Oh the life huh? Just chilling out in the sunshine!
Together we then decided to travel further up the coast to a place called Moeraki where there are some large perfectly round boulders on the beach which formed in ancient sea floor sediment during the early Paleocene, some 60 million years ago. The trouble is that between the peninsula and Moeraki there were way too many points to stop off at and take photos which meant we got to the village with just enough time to run down to Fleurs Place for some delicious food and live entertainment before heading off to bed.
Gull life
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