Month: March 2025

Well, we have come to the end of 12 days in New Zealand and over a reasonably good Indian meal we couldn’t decide on a “best moment” because, if you read the this post you’ll understand that “it just keeps getting better.

Yesterday morning Dunedin turned on a wet chilly start to the day so we hit the Dunedin art gallery.

The most impressive work was this one. Forgive the light reflection, I just couldn’t get a shot without it.

I know what you are thinking…”meh”. But here are a couple of details

Then a 30 minute drive to the Otago Peninsula where we stayed in a fabulous air bnb in Portobello, right on the water, ultra modern and reasonably priced.

When I say “right on the water, this was the view over the road

and see all those black spots? In case you hadn’t figured it out…black swans, hundreds of them. It was quite wonderful.

We didn’t really want to pay $50 a head to go to the little blue penguin viewing where you watch them come in for the night, it was a moot point anyway as it was booked out. So we checked out where they were at the Albatross centre and we were lucky enough to see a couple of albatross on the wing.

If I re-use superlatives, it is because everything is spectacular and amazing, and these were spectacular. Their wingspan is 3 metres, twice my height, and they spend most of their time soaring.

Thanks to ChatGPT “here are some fascinating facts about albatrosses”:

1. Master Flyers: Albatrosses are incredible long-distance fliers. They can glide for hours without flapping their wings, covering thousands of kilometers using dynamic soaring and slope soaring techniques.
2. Massive Wingspans: The wandering albatross holds the record for the longest wingspan of any living bird—up to 3.5 meters (11.5 feet)!
3. Lifelong Mates: Albatrosses are known for their strong pair bonds. Many species mate for life, performing complex courtship dances involving beak fencing, head bobbing, and vocalizations.
4. Long Lives: These seabirds can live 50 to 60 years, with some individuals reaching over 70 years old!
5. Efficient Sleepers: Albatrosses can sleep while flying by shutting down half their brain—an impressive adaptation for long ocean journeys.
6. Diet: They mainly feed on fish, squid, and krill, often diving or scavenging from the water’s surface.
7. Conservation Concerns: Many albatross species are endangered, primarily due to bycatch in fishing nets and longlines, as well as plastic pollution.
8. Incredible Navigators: Albatrosses use their keen sense of smell to locate food over vast ocean areas, a rare skill among birds.
9. Slow Breeders: Albatrosses lay only one egg every one to two years. Both parents share incubation duties for about 11 weeks, one of the longest incubation periods of any bird.
10. Myth and Symbolism: Throughout history, sailors have viewed albatrosses as symbols of good luck. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner popularized the idea of the “albatross around one’s neck,” symbolizing a burden.

Since we weren’t going to get to the penguins, we made a dinner/birthday booking at the local pub and got some good intel from a local to go to Allan’s Beach where we might see penguins.

On the way a hugely surprising find was a sea lion creche, right beside Allan’s Beach Rd, a very quiet gravel road. How close were the young sea lions? Very…

I hardly needed a zoom, they were less than 5 metres away over a fence to keep us away from them.

Allan’s Beach is a rugged place where we were almost the only people on the beach.

We waited until dark for penguins and could hear them, but not see them. Walking back along the beach in the dark I came impressively close to walking into a sea lion making its way to the water. If Erna hadn’t turned on her phone torch just at that moment it might have turned out to be an interesting meeting of species.

Despite not seeing penguins we all agreed it was one of the best adventures of our trip.

To finish…this is a photo of kelp from the cliff top near the Albatross centre. It is at least 3 metres long and there is lots of it.

and when you use the Nikon D7200 continuous shooting mode, where it takes about 5 shots per second, and then get google photos to stitch them into an animation, you get an idea of how hauntingly beautiful they were as the waves came and went.

Whew, quite a drive from Mt Cook to Dunedin. As the official chauffeur, cook, photographer, dishwasher, launderer, hair dresser and plumber I am pretty busy – OK, I don’t really do all that, but it was still a long and tiring drive across the country.

There is a little place called Waitaki where the call of “real fruit sorbet” at Waitaki Orchards was enough to warrant a break and a treat, neither of which went quite as expected.

First, the treat: WOW! If you ever happen to be passing this way do yourself a favour and have one of their apricot sorbets. We all agreed it is possibly the best ice cream we have ever tasted. It was seriously good, made in-house, from their own apricots. Did I mention it was seriouusly good?

Then there was the break in our drive: it was a bit lot longer than expected. We have a bank “travel card” where you put a bunch of money into an account, convert it to a currency of choice and then can spend it like a local using a debit card. At the start, we each added funds and it became our slush fund along the way. The system has had been faultless all through our trip.

But Waitaki is in rural New Zealand, their shop is apparently only open for 3 months a year, during the fruit season, so they don’t want to pay a chunky monthly fee for something modern like pay wave. Since we couldn’t just tap the card, the machine wanted a PIN, which, since it hadn’t been used before, had fallen out of heads somewhere along the road. There was a justified fear of getting it wrong 3 times and having the card (and our slush money) locked.

No worries, I will get my phone and pay myself…but wait…you can’t tap. No worries, Christa will use her German credit card…but wait…it wouldn’t accept it, or another of her cards. No worries, pay cash…but wait…we haven’t seen cash since we got here. No worries, give us bank details and we will drop money into the account…but wait…”I only work here, I don’t have those details”.

What to do, apart from continuing to praise the excellent ice cream in an attempt to soothe the woman behind the counter who was very patient with us.

Our 5 minute driving break had now extended to 30 minutes and there was no solution to be had. She wanted to give us the ice creams fro free, but we were adamant we wanted to do the right thing and pay. The end result was that I have emailed them asking how we can send them the money…and praising the ice cream, of course.

Oamaru, on the west coast, has a lovely historic area near the wharf and possibly the only people in the world making a living from steam punk.

I think the place came out of a Steampunk art competition about 20 years ago where they likely didn’t know what to do with all the entries so they opened a “museum”.

Also in Oamaru is a Little Blue Penguin colony, right on the edge of town. No penguins during the day, they are in their luxury motel rooms.

But there were plenty of fur seals. At first we were delighted that there were 3 we could see. After about half an hour of watching we realised there was about 20 of them lying on the rocks, such great camouflage that they are hard to spot until they move.

And on the way back, a shag/cormorant colony on an abandoned wharf.

Today it is a bit of a grey day in Dunedin, made a bit brighter by Christa’s 36 hour birthday, starting in New Zealand time and ending in German time.