Return to New Zealand - November 2010

After a leisurely breakfast, we departed at about 8:30am, heading south to Bluff. It took about two hours to get there. We stopped and took photos, not too spectacular, but it was the furthest south that we'd ever been.

Then we continued east, stopping for lunch in Balclutha, then continued to Dunedin. We checked in at Scenic Hotel Southern Cross, where we had top floor rooms, looking out over part of the city.

We went for a walk around, checking out the train station and "the octagon" at the town center. After walking around a bit, Randy headed back to the room to rest while the others hiked up a couple of steep streets to look around.

Then we were hungry, so we walked a couple of blocks from the hotel to a restaurant named Bennu. We had a fun waiter, really tasty food along with good beer and cosmos. Our waiter even brought us some delicious dessert wine at the end of the meal. Back in the room we watched a bit of a movie and then went to sleep.

We woke to a pretty gray day, we were hopeful it would clear later for our penguin viewing. After breakfast we drove around Dunedin a bit, saw the (allegedley) world's steepest street (Baldwin Street) and then went out to Larnach Castle where we walked the grounds and had lunch. The weather was clearing up nicely, with blue sky peeking through all around.

Back at the hotel we packed up the cameras and went to the lobby at quarter to 2 for our penguin tour; Rick was extremely excited! Around 2 we saw a young woman walk down the sidewalk outside, introduce herself to two people, and then walk off with them. We didn't think anything of it until a few minutes later we saw her drive by in a van with the name of our tour company (Back to Nature Tours) on it. She had picked up the wrong people! We waited a few minutes, hoping that she would come back, but by 2:15 it was pretty clear that she would not. Randy quickly talked to the concierge and contacted another tour company to get "plan B" figured out. Fortunately we booked a 5:30 beach tour. (Update: After we were back home in SF we received a call from the tour company and they were extremely apologetic. Turns out the two people on the sidewalk at the hotel were German tourists who spoke limited english and had just nodded when she asked "Are you Randy?". They fully refunded our deposit and offered to take us or any friends who visit New Zealand on a tour for free. Any takers?)

We headed out to the Otago Penninsula to Penguin Place, where we just made the 3:15 tour! The weather had completely cleared and it was a gorgeous afternoon. They took us down near the beach where we walked through covered trenches between blinds that were set up so that we could observe the penguins without disturbing them. It turns out that Yellow Eyed penguins are pretty solitary creatures. We saw about a half dozen of them, all sitting on eggs that were getting ready to hatch. At one spot we even saw a chick peek out from under it's parent! We then walked down to the beach where we saw a couple of penguins heading out to sea to feed. Then it was back to the visitor center.

Just down the road we arrived at Nature's Wonders where we boarded an eight wheeled Argo buggy and headed down to the beach. We saw a bunch of seals and then went to a long penguin blind where we saw several more Yellow Eyed Penguins, as well a couple of sleeping blue penguins. Two very fun penguin adventures, Rick was all smiles.

Along the road home we saw a grand storm in the distance. Back in town we decided to head back to Bennu for another tasty meal. It turned out that our cute waiter from the night before, Daniel, was actually the owner and he came over at the end of the meal to sit down and chat with us and share some more of the tasty dessert wine. Such friendly Kiwis!