Its like a zoo only better

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The following morning my legs didn't ache and I was out of bed really early - even surprised me after walked 50km in three days.

We packed up the car and headed off to Dunedin.
The road to Dunedin was very winding and scenic but the towns on the way were all very small with nothing to see or do. We did manage to find a cafe for a coffee and a sandwich but that was it.
Dunedin is a university town and is one of the busiest in the south Island. Despite Christchurch being the largest city Dunedin seems to have all the cars and for the first time I had to queue.
We had a list of places to stay and started to check them out. The first place was called Kiwi's Nest and looked like something out of the 18 hundreds so we soon moved on. We couldn't get to the other one that we wanted because the road was closed for road works and I couldn't fathom how to get round them. We eventually found this place a little out of town but it was nice.
The day was getting on by now so we just went for a drive and got completely lost. That managed to take up the rest of the day!

The next day we booked ourselves onto a wildlife tour that promised albatross, penguins, seals and sea lions. It didn't start until 2pm so we headed out to the Otago Peninsula by car.

The first bay that we got to was called Sandfly bay. Nothing to do with the pesky sand flies that bite the living hell out of you for no reason, apparently it is because the sand fly’s through the air on this very windy beach!!
Anyway the only way to get to this beach is down a massive sand dune. From the top is looks almost vertical. It was great fun running down it but not so much fun trying to get back up.
The tide was half out and the beach was massive. We walked along it and soon came across two sea lions. It was a mother and baby. The sign we had seen at the start said to keep at least 10 feet away as they are aggressive and fast animals. We ended up getting a lot closer (well I did want some good photos) It later turns out that the sign said 10 metres not 10 feet, oopps.

We then had to get back for that start of our tour. The tour turned out to be a great waste of $69. There are several wildlife reserved on the peninsula that you cannot get to without permission. We thought that the tour would be taking us to those. No. It turns out that they drive you to all the public places that I could have driven myself, including, wait for it, sandfly bay!

Well despite the waste of money we did get to see some Albatross, although from the height that they were flying it was easy to mistake them for seagulls.
We stopped at a couple of other bays and saw seals and sea lions up close before heading back to sandfly bay. The two sea lions were still there and had been joined by another much larger one. They smell so bad you can sense them far before you can see them. The last creature we had to see was the penguin.
There was apparently a colony that lived in burrows at the top of the cliff. Every morning they leave and go out to see to eat and collect fish for the young. Then just before sun set they return. When we got to the cliff there were a couple of penguins sunning themselves on the rock and despite waiting a very long time they were not going to perform for us.
The most action we got was someone trying to gain access to our private hide. Well our $69 dollars had to get us at least one privilege.
Eventually one penguin was seen launching himself out of the water and waddling up the beach to the rocks.

It was almost like the guide knew she was conning the money out of us and felt guilty about it as on the way back she gave us a guided tour of the city including a trip up the steepest road in the world. Most cars wouldn’t be able to climb it and it did feel like we were going to tip over backwards at any moment. I can’t believe that people live on this road.

This was pretty much it for Dunedin as the next morning we headed off to Invercargill via the Catlins.

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