Finally sitting down with a cup of tea and Ironman on the TV playing in the background, giving us the chance to sort out today’s video and photographic proof and update our holiday’s narrative for as much as we can remember.
The plan for today was to do a short hike of approx. 1½ hrs to Sandfly Point and back (slight change to that) followed by a drive to Dunedin (slight detour to that too). So what really happened and what is actually the point of planning ahead?
22:46 hrs. Sorry, really needed that shower and 2nd cup of tea.
Right! What really happened? Well.....
We were up at 06:45 hrs. Pack some final last bitties, bags in the car and off into the communal kitchen for a quick breakfast. Drive over to another car park to start our short hike to Sealy’s Point. At least, that was what our new intended, further destination after trying to follow the original plan of the Sandfly Point route for all of 5 minutes and already guestimating this trip would not take us longer than ½ hr, max.
It was another beautiful morning, great route, although somewhat steep in places, especially in sneakers and without hiking poles. After 1 hr and 20 minutes and having climbed well above the snowline, we decided to turn back with strong suspicions of having overshot the mark.
On the way down, after I examined the route and side of the mountain real close up and from a different angle, we did find the sign pointing to Sealy Point had in fact been tempered with and we had been well on our way to Müller Hut. Not to worry! As intended, we reached the parking lot 3 hrs after setting off, feeling well chuffed with ourselves and our achievements.
On to Dunedin! Via Oamaru that is. A Blue Penguin colony has settled itself here quite some time ago and a Yellow Eyed Penguin colony can also be found just around the corner. We did see some little Blue puddings in their nesting boxes, but were unfortunately too early (14:45 hrs) to see much action as the little munchkins, i.e. the parents, normally don’t start returning from the sea (with food for the chicks) until a bit before sunset, which currently is not until around 21:30 hrs. As we couldn’t wait that long because we still had a way to go before getting to Dunedin, which, after our visit to the hatching boxes made it very unlikely we’d get there until some time around 17:00 hrs anyway.
A quick wonder to the location where the Yellow Eyed Penguin is normally found, again too early, and off we were for Dunedin. 17:15 hrs and we’d reached our accommodation in Dunedin. In reception we were received by an extremely large and very loud purring cat. However tempting to stay and cuddle the big fluffy thing, it did not stop us from already paying an exploratory visit to the Otago Peninsula.
We were very lucky in spotting a huge female Elephant Seal on Sandfly Beach (what is it with these continued references to Sandflies?) and decided the hike up and down the beach along the steep cliffs was well worth the effort, including the load of sand we carried back in our shoes.
Although weather was beautiful and therefore didn’t look very promising for spotting some Albatross in action, who like gale force winds to facilitate their landings and take-offs, we decided to drive on to the top of the peninsula, just on the off chance.....
No wind to speak of but we did see some Albatross. What magnificent gliders! Can we have some more of that tomorrow please!
On the way back to the hotel we stopped off for a spot of dinner and reached our humble but more than comfortable abode by 21:30 hrs.
Shower time! Well past midnight now and time for bed.
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