Is this the way to Oamaruuuuu?

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On the way to Oamaru we stopped off at Shag Point. Here we wanted to see the yellow eyed penguins and the New Zealand fur seals. We walked up a track that took us to the look out point over the beach. There was no sign of any penguins but there was another couple there with binoculars. Wait! Eagle eyed Andy spotted something! A little white speck on the beach, which with further inspection turned out to be a yellow eyed penguin. How exciting! So we watched him for a while and borrowed the couples binos. We then walked down another track to view the seals. This was great the last time we saw seals in Westport you had to try and pick them out, but here we got really close. There was on a boat ramp that we got really close to, about 8ft away. We were busy getting close and taking photos of the sleeping seal and then he suddenly opened his mouth and started coughing, his breath stunk, and it scared us and we ran so fast like a couple of girls! But he never moved and wasn't bothered with us taking photos, just occasionally opening one eye.

We carried on with our drive to Oamaru stopping at Moeraki boulders. From here you can either pay $2 to go onto the beach from the highway or walk along the beach from the reserve close by for free. So we walked along the beach 20 minutes to the busy Moeraki boulders. Scientists don't know how or why they are there and it is not the action of the sea that has made them this way. But one opinion is that they have been weathered from the cliffs. Maori belief is that they were food baskets deposited from a sunken ship or dragon eggs. We carried on our drive and arrived in Oamaru. We got booked into a busy site, full of Swedish campervan clubbers. We had a walk around the town, which was nice, had a hot chocolate in a cafe and went back to our site.

That night after tea, about 7pm, we drove to the yellow eyed penguin colony at Bushy Beach. This is free and this is the time they come ashore. We could see them coming ashore after a long days fishing. (They swim up to 45km out to sea a day and they can dive up to 200m down) At one point 2 came right up to the path and we could get a really good look at them.
Just as we were leaving we spotted the couple who we sat next to on the plane from England to Rio! (and who we also saw in Ipanema, Rio) So we had a chat and from here we all drove to the little blue penguin colony to view them at 8.15pm. This one you have to pay for and you can't take photos. You sit in a stand watching them come ashore. These are the smallest penguins in the world (about duck size), they swim about 25km out to sea to fish and can dive up to 60m down. We saw 2 rafts (groups of penguins) come ashore with about 100 penguins. We then left, as we had been there 2 hours and it was freezing. We got back to our site, had some cheese on toast and then bed.

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Photos

Fur Seal
Pass me the club! (This was Andy!)

Moeraki Boulders
Wonder what hatched out of that?

Moeraki Boulders
Look at the size of those balls!

Moeraki Boulders
Use your imagination.