Cadbury World
The tour culminates with a 4 story, one ton chocolate waterfall. Though it was no surprise, I still couldn’t refrain from bursting into giddy laughter. I’m not sure whether it was the silliness of it or sheer pleasure. The creepy part enters next when Colleen proceeds to make us cant “I love chocolate” inside the hollow silo. It was like Willy Wonka at Latin Mass. Weird!
Cute Yellow Eyed Penguins with Happy Feet while they are Marching
Stretching out from the Dunedin coast is the Otago Peninsula. As with much of the geography round these parts, it was formed by a volcano many, many, many years ago. At the very tip of the peninsula is the Taiaroa Head – home to the only mainland colony of Royal Albatross in the world. During our visit to the Southland Museum in Invercargill (aka Invercrappy per Dave’s post), we saw three of these massive birds on display. (They had been unfortunate enough to meet with the wrong side of a fisherman’s net.) It took a few minutes to really grasp what I was seeing. These birds are unbelievably huge. They were so big, it was almost cartoonish. To add to the experience, the display also had a rather creepy recording of the calls they make. I could have lived without that. Either way, after seeing them stuffed, we were curious to see these creatures live and in flight.
The Elm Wildlife Tour was recommended to us by the friendly Kiwi managing our hostel. They have a backpacker rate (excellent!) and in addition to driving you to the albatross colony will take you to a reserve that they manage to see other cute little Kiwi critters up close and personal.
For a brief minute, Dave and I considered riding our bikes out to the center along the coastal road, but after the previous day’s hike-n-bike up Three Mile Hill, I was more than happy to take a bus! Once we saw the crazy, narrow, windy road, we were especially happy with our decision.
First stop was the Royal Albatross Center. According to the guides, you have a pretty good chance of seeing them in flight when it’s windy. Funny, I understood windy to be a permanent weather condition here, but perhaps I am mistaken. As we pulled into the parking lot, an albatross was flying overhead. Really awesome!
The Royal Albatross is the largest of the world’s seabirds. It can measure up to 1.2 metres and has a wing span of 3.3 metres. They are incredibly efficient birds using the wind like a glider to carry them for thousands of miles out to sea before returning back to breed. Though there were many seagulls and spotted shags (quite a nice bird as well) roosting along the cliffs and flying overhead, it was easy to tell the albatross by its size of course and by their glide. They really soar on the wind. No flapping necessary.
After gawking at these surreal birds and watching an entertaining sealion in a fish feeding frenzy in the bay below us, we boarded our little bus and set off for their private reserve on the eastern side of the peninsula. Along the way we spotted black swans, pukekos (a deep blue bird also known as a swamp hen), pied stilts, white faced herons, black-backed gulls and little shags.
Our group of about 8 folks went with one of the guides down a rather steep hillside to a viewing hut just above a colony of New Zealand fur seals lounging along the rocky shore. We observed the females with their pups playfully splashing in the pools. Very cute. The hut was set up to view them from a comfortable distance, as the fur seal doesn’t take to kindly to people getting too close. Fortunately for the fur seal, they have been recolonised quite successfully and have seen a population increase after being hunted to near extinction by European seal hunters in the previous century.
After hiking back up the windy headland, we ventured down the otherside to a beach where we walked right up to a group of sleepy Hooker sealions.The Hooker sealion is the rarest of the world’s five species of sealions and are endemic to New Zealand. They are apparently making a comeback after being eliminated by Maori hunting centuries ago. Unlike the fur seals, these guys like company and are known to be gregarious. Our guide had studied the sealions for his masters degree and was very diligent about preventing any of us (like the two mischievous German boys) from getting too close. When asked what they would do, he said that they would most likely just run at you to see you run, but their bite can leave a nasty bruise. You might think you could just outrun one of these big, lazy looking guys, but think again! They can run up to 20kph. No worries mate! These guys were busy resting up for a night of prowling the ocean waters.
Further down the beach, we could see a wee little yellow-eyed penguin making his way onto shore. We walked down the beach and were able to observe the penguins from a few viewing huts. Like the fur seals, these guys are a little on the nervous side. Who can blame them? The big guys down the beach would be happy to have them for dinner.
We watched as slowly, one by one, the penguins popped out of the water and waddled over to the hillside where they would hop and jump their way to the nest and chicks they had left behind that morning. Yellow-eyed penguins are the rarest of the world’s 18 species of penguins and also found only in New Zealand. They were named Hoiho or noise shouter by the Maori for the loud, distinctive call – which we were fortunate to hear a few times. They nest in coastal vegetation and forest where they can hide from their neighbors. According to our guide they can swim 15 – 20 kilometers out to sea and then back again each day. You have to wonder how they know how to get home. Quite amazing creatures!
Not every day you can see rare animals up close in their own habitat. All in all, pretty awesome day!
Along the Presidential Highway
The terrain here in the Southland is relatively flat to rolling hills. It reminds me a lot of the Ozarks. The domed hills will also be familiar to anyone that has spent much time in front of a Windows XP machine. You know the desktop wallpaper that it ships with? The one with the grass hills that strech on forever? The too perfect curve of the hills into the meadow? I could give you a million photos like that from Southland …but they would all have sheep on them.
We’re in the “Roaring ’40′s” down here, and the winds do roar …at our backs. It’s been some easy riding (by design if I do say so myself). In fact just like Camelot, it only rains here after dark. No really, it has rained on us almost every night since we arrived in Invercargill …but only after say 6:30 or so. Very convienient. Then every morning around say 5:30 or so there’s a big wind storm that rolls through and drys everything out. How could I make this up? If man ever figures out how to control the weather, I would say we follow the model they use down here.
Now the thing about this route is that it takes us through two neighboring towns with cosmically coincidental names: Clinton and Gore. They’re about 40k apart from one another, and for some reason during the ’90′s the road signs between these two towns were being stolen at an alarming rate.
Gore is the bigger of the two. Apparently there is great Brown Trout fishing there – they claim to be simultaneously the Trout Fishing Capitol of the World, and the Country Music Capitol of New Zealand (I couldn’t get anyone to comment on whether or not they invented the Internet in Gore). But it is the home of the Gore Library, which may be as close as Al ever gets.
Clinton is by it’s own admission only a three horse town – they have a statue in the middle of town of three horses – not much else besides that really.
So that’s it. The only drama on this leg of the ride is that I broke a spoke (never done that before) and rode about a day on it before we found a guy that does small motor and bike repair in Balclutha. He put in a new spoke and trued the wheel. Onward to Dunedin!