The morning started off early towards Tunnel Beach just outside of Dunedin. The hiking trek to get there goes through sheep pastures and then takes a steep drop down to the beach below. With every step, Matt kept looking back up saying, “Ya know, we have to climb back up this…It’s really steep.” I was thinking about the climb back up too, but I wanted to check out the beach more. The last part of the trek takes you through a man-made tunnel and pops you out into a secluded beach with giant boulders.
There were massive storm clouds that were threatening to dump, so back up the trail we went. Good grief the trail was steep!!!!! The incline was much greater than I had allowed myself to notice coming down. It was the kind of trail where you just bend over parallel to the ground, put your head down, don’t look up, hands on your backpack straps and just trudge…one foot in front of the other. I’m sure I burned off enough calories for at least 2 pringles.
We made a quick stop at a Cheese Farm. It was kinda creepy. I don’t think the cheese lady had seen visitors in quite sometime. I was ready to turn around and run out, but then I set off a motion detector and sounded the “guest bell” so we were trapped. We left the creepy cheese farm with a small wedge of both regular brie and smoked brie. It was pretty darn tasty.
Next stop, the Moeraki Boulders. These are large spherical boulders that sit on a stunning stretch of beach. They say they look like giant marbles scattered around. However, Matt has his doubts. The origins of where these rocks came from and why they happen to be in just this one spot are not in our Lonely Planet book. Matt seems to think they are “fake” and that the restaurant on the cliff above put them there as a fake attraction. He’s nuts!
After arriving in Oamaru and getting settled at our new campsite, we headed out to Bushy Beach to watch the Yellow-Eyed Penguins come ashore from their day of hunting. It happens around 6:30pm and you are allowed to view them from the bluffs above. There’s a jolly-old Scottsman who’s the docent and points out the little black and white dots that waddle onto the beach.
The day ended with watching the little Blue Penguins return to shore from a days hunting out at sea. The Oamaru colony is one of the largest in New Zealand. 46 little guys came waddling out of the surf once it got dark. They came in on “rafts” meaning when a group meet offshore and come in together. No photos are allowed since they are shy, but mainly because their eyes are so sensitive to light that if a tourist accidentally fired their flash, it could actually damage the penguins’ eyesight. They are the smallest of all the penguin species. During the summer months up to 300 can come jumping out of the surf and hopping up onto land. They were really noisy too. Lots of calls signally each other when it was safe to move as a pack. Everyone watching had to stay very quiet and still. We sat in bleachers and it was like watching a really slow baseball game, but it was worth it. There were another 20 spilling onto the sand by the time we left at 9pm for a total of 66 penguins for the night.
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