I woke up before the alarm again (only a few minutes, but that's good enough for me - much nicer to wake up naturally!), and got straight to the business of breakfast. I fried up some sausages and eggs and put them in sandwiches.
It was around 7.10am and the only other people who appeared to be awake were two people from San Fransisco. They were in new Zealand for another few weeks also, before going back due to work committments. We chatted about the earthquake (you might notice that this is likely to be a common talking point, it was a big event!), and they advised me that despite living in San Fransisco, this was still the biggest quake they had experienced.
I was complimented on my ability to make myself a cooked breakfast in the morning, the wife making a playful jibe about her husband, who took the bait and defending himself by saying he did manage to heat water up for the coffee!
After making lunch sandwiches, I packed my day bag, and made it to the bus exactly on time, after stopping to ask ather person if they had managed to get a lift to Queenstown. She hadn't, and had got a bus ticket instead.
The bus driver had lots of information about the area to share, and pointed out a new mural, and a new piece of art - 4 boulders cut out to look like molar teeth - the artists concept being that it was at the back of the harbour mouth, and a mouth needed teeth, and the back teeth are morals. Many puns followed from the bus driver, and I admitted that it was something to chew on.
We first of all went to Larnach castle, a project that was built by William Larnach, who had become the manager of the Otago bank, on top of other business interests that he had ongoing, such as timber mills.
On the way to the castle, te driver pointed out the dry stone walls, of which these were the only ones in the whole of New Zealand, as well as pointing out a house which was used for the filming of "The Light between Oceans", starring Daniel Craig.
Some info that we learned while touring the house:
Larnach started building it in 1871
Windows were taken from the bank of otago, some of which still had the etched logos on them!
The chandeliers used methane reclaimed from the waste disposal systems
The doors were made using douglas fir, and english oak
The fire place mantlepieces were made from marble
The bus I had come to the castle on took everyone else back to Dunedin, and I stayed on to get on the next bus option which was to the Albatross observatory. This bus only had two other people on it, both being from Belgium.
At the observatory, we went up to the sheltered observation platform, where we could see nesting albatrosses (I just had to look up what the plural is!) and had the opportunity to see one flying if we were lucky. We were lucky, and I was the first to spot it, which impressed the tour guide. We were even more in luck as it was a juvenile albatross trying to land, which meant that it circled many times, giving us all plenty of chances to see it and take photographs.
After we had to go back to the main building, the guide at the albatross center advised us that the Monarch tour (the one I was on with the two people from Belgium) would pick us up in another hour or so, which gave us time to go down and see the seals, or go to another viewing platform to get another chance to see the albatrosses again.
I went down to the seal beach first, and was rewarded by a seal deciding to climb up from the beach to where I was stood taking photos of it, as it elt that where I was standing was a much nicer spot to rst in the sun. As such I managed to get some great shots in between admiring it, and walking backwards so that I stayed a respectful distance from the seal.
I went round to the viewing platform area after that, and there were more seal swimming in the sea, and lots of red beaked gulls flying about.
I had noticed around the area that the bird poo had a lot of pink/red material in it, so I decided to ask at the reception what was in the food that made it that colour, and was informed that it was krill that the seagulls ate
I made it back to the car park ith enough time to spare to grab one of my lunch sandwiches, and as I ate it, one of the gulls decided I might offer some left overs so hung around - I wasn't so obliging though!
The bus arrived to pick us up and take us to the penguins before I could start the next sandwich so I had that on the bus
The penguin tour was next, and we were advised that the yellow eyed penguins were pretty solitary animals and tend to be shy of humans, so there is a network of trenches that have been made so that only our faces are visible - making us look smaller and less threatening to them. As we went along the cliff edge, we saw a number of small blue penguins in man made holes - the whole area being a conservation area to help the penguin numbers increase as much as possible.
A sea lion was basking on the beach in the distance, and the only single yellow eyed penguin in the colony had decided to stay in today instead of going fishing so we got those as unexpected treats for the day.
We then made our way through the trenches to the nest where there was known to be a pair of penguins raising a chick, so we were guaranteed to see at least one adult penguin and one chick. That was something special, as although the hole was man mae, they are living in the wild, not in captivity - the parents take turn about in looking after the chick while the other goes fishing for food for themselves + chick.
The yellow eyed penguin is the most rare and most endangered species of penguin in the world, so I feel quite fortunate that I got to see one with its chick!
Time had passed fairly quickly throughout the day so far, and the penguin guide had lost track of time too, so we were almost late for the boat cruise part of my day tour. We made it in time though, and boarded the boat which set off for the Albatross colony.
During the wildlife part of the boat tour we were spoiled with different pecies to view - not only were the Northern Royal albatross there (the ones I had seen already earlier in the day), but some Southern Royal albatross were also present, taking advantage of the changing wind to feed in the area. In addition to that we also saw a white capped albatross, a northern giant petrel, and plenty of gulls and shags. It was a veritable ornitholigists dream!
We made our way back inland after that along the northern shore, where the water was deep enough for the travel, going via Port Chalmers (the new sea port for the area since the cargo boats had become too big to be able to reach Dunedin any more)
After we reached land, I had the option of taking the minibus back to the hostel, but I decided to walk back, so that I could go via the new mural, and also admire the scultpure we had been shown at the start of the tour, which represented an albatross in flight - though now having seen albatross in flight, it might be better to describe it as an albatross taking off!
I made it back to the hostel, and made up another noodle based dinne, before starting to wade through the countless number of photos I had taken - it's unlikely I'll be ready to upload them for a while now, as I took scores of photos of the same subject matter and it will take a while to decide on the best ones!