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Published: February 6th 2008
Yeah - today we go and see penguins!
After a really short drive of only 2 hours (will think nothing of driving in England now) we arrived at a funky hostel called Swaggers Backpackers. At 11am we were the first to arrive and so the owner (a wacky lady called Agra) showed us around and let us chose our own beds! It looked like Agra had just converted her home into a hostel (with a private section for her and her 16 year old son) but it was full of old comfy couches and chairs, plus lots of bric-a-brac, really homely and reminded me of Aunty Mildred's house.
As Agra was itching to get out of the hostel she kindly offered to show us around the city and gave us a free tour! She took us to a gallery, had coffee in the local Cafe and then took us to the Whisky Warehouse and showed us the beautiful gallery rooms upstairs.
This feel certainly felt more Scottish than Dunedin and really friendly aswell.
After that Agra showed us the best place to see the little Blue Penguins come up from the sea, they are nocturnal so she
told us to head down there for about 9.45pm tonight. She told us that sometimes the penguins can wander to far into the city and you can see them walking down the streets - the locals have to bring them back in boxes!
Agra then returned back to her hostel and we had a wander around the quaint town, before it started to rain so we went back aswell.
The hostel had free internet (very rare over here) so me and Di took this opportunity to send an email to Thomas Cook resigning from our jobs - we are now both officially unemployed! I did enjoy my time with them but the thought of all the moaning guests is just so off-putting. Plus I have learned that this type of travelling is so much better - no regrets at all.
We celebrated by opening a bottle of red wine and Agra bought some cookies and a copy of Love Actually aswell!
By this time the hostel had filled up (there are only 11 beds in total, quite a cosy place and because of this everyone gets on) so I recruited all the other guests (2 Taiwan
The path of the penguins
This is where they wobble up at nightgirls, a japenese guy, 4 chinese guys and an arab) to come watching the penguins with us.
At 10pm (we got distracted with Love Actually) we all headed down to the harbour and the penguins were just starting to come up from the sea. The are Blue Penguins and are the tinest species - about 18 inches tall! At first we thought they were ducks until they actually wobbled up the cliff faces and came right near us! As it was dark and you can't use camera flashes as it scares them away, unfortunatley I haven't any pictures but the experience was amazing!
Some of the other kept creeping closer to the penguins trying to get pictures and were blocking their pathway into the bushes were they nest - so me and di had to act like there body guards and kept telling everyone to stand back! But they were only about a foot in front of us and sooooo cute!
After that we had a walk to the place where they do charge people to see them (thank god Agra showed us her secret spot - soo much better and we got it for free) and
Don't scare them!
No camera flashes am afraid on the way we saw the Penguins crossng the road to get to their nests in the cliffs (don't worry it's not a busy road). They make soo much noise, but apparently as they are nocturnal this is just them chatting to one another - we thought they were distressed at first - turns out they were just gossiping!
It got pretty cold so we all headed back to the Hostel where we had milky coffee's and finished watching Love Actually.
The nicest suprise was that Agra had put on electric blankets for me and Diane - toasty warm!
This has got to be the homelist hostel ever - it's not often you get cookies, DVD's and electric blankets all thrown in!
Thanks agra!
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