Albatross Adventures

Like I said earlier we were only about an hour away from Dunedin which was our destination for the day. Otago Peninsular, Dunedin is where we are hoping to see an Albatross and maybe penguins. Our first visit was on the Albatross tour, the guide Christine gave a very informative presentation before we were lead up the cliff to see three Albatross chicks. We were told we may see another Albatross flying in but that didn’t happen. The chicks were cute though.

 

Elder Saunders had a little rest in our camper while I went for a stroll near the cliffs. Imagine my delight when I saw two albatrosses’ flying around. I videoed them so I could show them to Elder Saunders later but luckily for him one came out for a fly by when he got up. They are so big and glide majestically around the sky. I was told that they would have been the juvenile Albatrosses’ showing off because the parents of the chicks would have just flown in to feed their young.
We had a free hot chocolate, curtesy of a magazine we picked up at the airport, before making our day complete on the Penguin search.
We had to wait until dusk before we made our way down to the specially built platform on the beach. We must have waited for about an hour before we heard the calls of both the penguins out at sea and the ones left behind on the shore because it was the moulting season.

It was delightful to see these little blue penguins come out of the water then curiously coming up the beach. There was infrared spotlighting just in front of the platform so that we could clearly see them. One even come just in front of where we were standing and made himself at home there. Others waddled up just beside the platform. Hopefully my photos will show just how close they came.  One lonely penguin came to the shoreline about half an hour later but kept going back into the water. Then we could hear calls from another penguin on the right hand side of the beach so that little lonely penguin swam back into the sea and climbed out onto the rocks on the right hand side of the beach.  It was quite dark on the rocks but we could still just make out his trek across the rocks. About another half an hour later our guide said we would be finishing in about 5 minutes and just as our 5 minutes were up another two penguins came out from their day long fishing adventure. That again was very cute to watch. They very slowly waddled up across the sand looking all around them and then right past the platform. What an exciting end to our day. Now to find somewhere to camp for the night.