Shake your tail feathers

Oamaru is home to yellow-eyed and the little-blue (fairy) penguin colonies making our total three out of the eighteen species of penguins we’ve seen in the wild. At first there was only one little yellow eye guy hiding up on the cliff in the brush. Don’t know how they get up there, must be funny to watch though. That must be why they come to shore around night to nest so the other animals don’t laugh as they waddle there little tails up the rocky crags.


Our next stop was the little-blue penguin colony which is home to almost 250 pairs of tiny penguins no taller than 30cm and weighing about 1kg. They spend their days at sea fishing and return at dusk to their homes on shore. We got to watch as groups of 20 or 30 penguins slowly made their way up the boulders to their nest boxes across the road. Well save you that joke. It was quite entertaining watching them cautiously wobble across the road as quickly as their tiny webbed feet would take them.

After our penguin extravaganza we made our way to Mt. Cook, the highest mountain on New Zealand. No, we didn’t attempt to snow covered summit of the 3800m mountain, but rather went for a nice stroll along Hooker Valley to one of the local glaciers. The river at the bottom of the valley was a rush of electric blue from the glacier run off. We were lucky to hike when we did because the weather started to turn as night fell. Our little “Michelangelo TMNT” shock in the gale force winds; we felt sorry for the unfortunate campers in their tents.