Penguins, Gondolas and Tram rides

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Today we spent the morning in Christchurch and went with all the Granny's up the gondola and around the city by tram ( we seemed to have hooked up with a saga bus tour or something ) It was a fairly tame ride, but I still got a bit squeemish as the gondola began to swing in the wind. You are meant to have a cracking view of the southern alps from the top but due to low cloud it was a bit limited.

We then jumped in the van to begin our 5ish hour drive to Oamaru which was really dull and quite possibly the longest straightest road we have ever driven on. It was fairly tiring stuff so we stopped of in Timaru at Carolines bay for lunch and a dook in the sea on the lovely sandy beach as it was a scorcher of a day!

We then had a wander around the town and stocked up on beasty repellant before the onslaught of the notorious South Island sand flies ( Midgies on Steroids )

We arrived in Oamaru just in time to catch the penguin express which was basically an old boy with an even older bus. This tour was to take us to the hotspots for viewing the local colonies of Yellow eyed penguins and later on to a blue penguin sanctuary. Now given the name of the tour we expected to be taken straight to see the little guys but no we got a tour of the very small town and our guide insisted on explaining every building...

"over here we have the local PAK n SAVE which employs 40 - 60 people" ( you get the idea !)

We finally arrived at Bushy Beach just a little after 8pm and did not have to walk far along before we were inches from a yellow eyed penguin, I did not expect to be as close to one as they are so rare but clearly they are so used to seeing tourists that this wee man just happily sat there while we all took his picture.

One penguin took offence to a guys zoom lens intruding in his personal space that he squirted what I can only describe as a really watery fart that followed through in his direction!! Graham and I were helpless!!

The finale of the night was well worth the wait ( and the boring commentary from the bus driver ) we were taken to the blue penguin sanctuary where we watched hoardes of blue penguins surf onto shore for the night for a night of hot loving as it is breeding season...

We all sat in a viewing area with special sodium lighting so they could not see the light or us as we watched them surf the waves only a few feet away from where we sat - This was amazing to watch!! These penguins are also known as fairy penguins as they are so cute and they are really quite clumsy in their moves.

What happens at first is that they send a volunteer to check that it is safe to come ashore and then he swims back to give them the all clear!! At first you just see a wee raft of black blobs out at sea then they all swim together, and land on the beach washed in by the waves, it looked like they were surfing!

So another wee thing ticked off our must do list while we are here!!!!

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