Deborah's travels: Otago Peninsula

I flew from Nelson to Christchurch and on to Dunedin. It was raining and cloudy all the way, but I saw the braided river at Christchurch

and the Canterbury plains.

My plans had been to visit the Otago Peninsula, and although it was still raining, the forecast said that it would stop raining a bit after noon, so I decided to go to the end of the peninsula and find something for lunch. Unfortunately, Monday isn’t the day to find lunch on the Otago Peninsula! After trying several places, I found some at the Royal Albatross centre.

I had found out that OPERA (a private regeneration and rehabilitation centre, concentrating on yellow eyed penguins) had a tour at 1:15pm, I went straight there after my lunch. The tour started by showing us the little blue penguin nesting boxes,

and we were able to peer into a couple to see they actually contained penguins.

Then we passed a lot of New Zealand Fur Seals sunning themselves on the grass and rocks.

We saw the beach, and at the other end of it I saw a penguin land, walk up the beach and disappear into the shrubs. It was very quick, and was definitely a yellow eyed penguin.

Then we went back to the rehabilitation centre where six juvenile yellow eyed penguins were being held to fatten them up before they have their first moult. There are only about five hundred of these penguins on the New Zealand main islands, and every one of them is kept here for this part of their development and then released back to the wild.