Otago Peninsula and Dunedin to Moeraki- 10th Feb

When we got up it was a completely miserable day with some heavy rain and mist. We decided it would be a good opportunity to catch up on some laundry. The dryer in the campsite wasn’t very good so we had to hang up all our clothes in the back of the van – we looked like Gypsies! They soon dried. We headed for the Otago Peninsula which sticks out in the sea towards the Antarctic from Dunedin. We were hoping to get a glimpse of some Penguins as they are common to that area. Before long we arrived at Lanarch Castle – the only Castle in New Zealand. It fit in well as Dunedin the Gaelic word for Edinburgh! When we entered the grounds they gave us a route card so that we could head around the castle and look at the native plants and trees. Gav took loads of photos and Amanda got us lost.... no surprise there! So Gav took over navigation and we got back on track. The castle itself was not as impressive as some of those in the UK – a little bit more impressive than Dalton Castle though! It was nice to see a bit of influence from the UK. 

Before we left we went to the cafe and got a hot drink to warm up and some amazing homemade carrot cake. This was in the ballroom of the castle which had impressive features such as chandeliers and mounted animal heads.

After a fair bit of driving all we had managed to see were some more seals and a whole load of seagulls – we get enough of those in Barrow so we were not too impressed! We headed back off the peninsula to the city of Dunedin and parked up the van. It was very strange to walk around the city centre as you could have easily been in Edinburgh – the buildings were similar and the street names – Princes Street etc – all fit in well. There was even a souvenir shop dedicated solely to selling Scottish goods and gifts. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side and we definitely felt like we were in the UK. It was a bit too early to find a camp site so we headed further north, not really sure where to go or what to do.

On our map was an interesting headland named ‘Shag Point’ – obviously referring to the birds! We headed there to see what was on offer and found more seals than we could have imagined. At one point we were watching a seal playing in the bay and then all of a sudden it headed towards us, out of the water and up the beach. We backed off keeping the recommended 10 meters away. It was only then that we realised we were stood less than 2 meters from a sleeping seal that was the same colour as the rocks. It didn’t seem to mind us being there! We headed a bit higher on the headland and from here Amanda could count 53 seals without moving! What an amazing site. There were signs here that Penguins were nesting but again we could not see any.

After about 2 hours we were feeling tired enough to stop and we reached a town called Moeraki so pulled off the main highway to find a campsite. On the beach front was a lovely site where they had seek Orca (Killer Whales) migrating just a few weeks before. We headed to the kitchen and to cheer us up for not seeing any penguins we made maple syrup pancakes that we had bought the ingredients for a few days before. While we were cooking a group of kiwis came in to cook their meal. We got talking and told them we were upset to not see any Penguins and they said that if we headed to a nearby lighthouse then we had a good chance of seeing some. We headed there and at first all we could see were a couple waddling up the beach. It was breathtaking. We walked around the headland a bit and too our surprise we saw 12 Yellow eyed penguins resting after a day’s fishing in the sea. They are very rare Penguins so we felt really privileged to see them. We walked within a couple of meters of them and they just watched us walk by. Eventually we had managed to see some Penguins and we were very happy!

Before we fell asleep we finished watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy – we had started 3 weeks earlier!! It was a mission to watch but we could appreciate it for seeing where it was filmed!