A 5 hour drive south brought me to the coastal town of Oamaru. The drive itself was pretty dull on a road with quite a lot of traffic and a detour following a bad accident in Timaru (incidentally the birthplace of Phar Lap). Oamaru is surprisingly nice to look at and very reminiscent of Leamington Spa but much, much smaller. The main street is wide with an avenue of trees and parking for cars, the buildings are of lcoal white stone and architecture is Edwardian with pillars and romanesque frontages. I parked at the i centre for information about the penguins then walked down the shopping street and on closer inspection Oamaru seems to be a bit.. well .. how can I put it? run down? The shops cater for all manner of household issues, carpets, curtains, electrics, plumbing and some dubious fashions.. but that’s about it. At one time it must have beena thriving town as there are lots of derelict warehouses and trading posts – it reminded me of Gloucester docks before it was renovated. It even has a Llloyds bank! Bored with the town (apart from the fab statue of a penguin) I checked into the Red Kettle hostel (Wendy and her husband are great hosts) and then drove to Bush Beach to check out the yellow eyed penguins – only found around the south east of NZL and not in captivity anywhere. There is a viewing platform high above the beach but you can’t see much, although you can hear them. For $16 I took the tour with a DOC volunteer to get up close and smelly with a nest containing a Mrs Penguin and her 2 babbies – all brown and fluffy! It was realy cute and I got some fab photos. But blimey it stank! All along the coastline of the beach is native bush where they build nests high up from the beach and we saw a few landing on the sand washed up like fat ducks and waddle up to the steep cliff and disappear from view to find their nests and feed the babies. The mother we watched was about 30 m above sea level – quite a climb when your feet are stuck together! I suggest you try it! All round us were other families making noise and smell but you can’t see them, so well hidden in the bush. I dashed back to hostel for some story fry dinner then out again to see another penguin colony at the old harbour – over 200 blue penguins come ashore at dusk every night in the breeding season to feed their young having been out feeding and fetching food all day. They land in a large group of around 70 called a ‘raft’ for obvious reasons. Once on shore they battle with the surf to stand upright them leg it up the sand to the short ramp of rocks and across a gravel track to some wooden nesting boxes manmade of course (unless penguins have evolved to use hammers and nails?). The public get to watch from a seating platform under orange lighting. I enjoyed seeing the ickles arrive, but it was spoiled by the crowds of people and thety just don’t shut up! Why do people ignore the requests for quiet? It annoys me no end….. so after 2 hours of sitting in the cold and dark I am about to tuck myself into bed.PS – of you want to see the blue penguins ‘live’ check out the webcam at www.penguins.co.nz and view the nestbox.
Archive for December 12th, 2007
I am now the proud adopted owner of a ‘Toyota Starlet’.. a bit like a Nissan Micra, grey and small but frendly and easy to drive. Leaving Christchurch at 1pm I motored along familiar roads north to Kaikora passing the 2 wineries where I got a bit tipsy on my birthday! In Kaikora I checking into the Albatros backpackers – very quaint colonial building in a backstreet run by ‘Heidi’ who had her hands in some bleach when I arrived, but who showed me around like I was an old friend and even picked me a fresh pink rose from her garden to put on my windowsill. My double bedroom is basic but seems OK. Cooking myself a pastas dish I then took a stroll along the beach of grey pebbles and through the houses to see how Kaikora residents live – the answer would seem to be : very comfortably with cute cottage gardens! Having had dubious sleep of late I opted for an early night with a book and was asleep by 9pm. Waking up at 5am to the sound of a bell bird outside my window was not what I had in mind! I was due at the whale centre by 7.15am so got up anyway, left the hostel as quiely as possible and killed time sitting in the car overlooking the bay hoping to spot dolphins. I didn;t see any. By 7.45am I was in a hot sticky bus with 40 other tourists and dropped on a harbour in South Bay to get onto the ‘Wheketene’ -a boat to take us out to sea. It seemed calm and I hadn;t taken any seasick pills. Within minutes the boat was powering along under the control of Captain Rex, and we had a running commentary and some geology lessons from Jane via a pc screen and microphone. The Kaikora coastline has a deep canyon over one mile deep which provides food for marine life and large mammals. It;s unique. The sea was pretty bouncy and I loved it, but before long the sick bags came out and one Japanese family puked in unison almost from the start! Revolting. I concentrated on the sea and looked for ’spouts’ of water to indicate a whale. We spent a very long time drifting and the skipper used a hydrophone to listen for whale ecolocation noises – it looked like he was dropping an alpine horn into the sea! He moved the boat a few miles further out and then we saw our first whale – BIG NICK so named after a missing piece of flesh in his dorsal fin! We only saw 10% of his body above the water, his blowhole, dorsal fin and tail – and after 10 mins of blowing water he did a deep dive flicking his tail above and down into the sea to be submerged for up to an hour. to kill time until he came back we did some more high speed jetting over the 2m swell – more puking from the Japs – and a bit more alpine horn dunking to no avail. Back in our original spot we were lucky to see Big Nick again as he came back for more air after his feeding dive. He gave an even better display of his tail and I even got a reasonable photo. Somehow though, the experience was a bit lacking. Back at shore we were whisked back by bus to our start point and I got into the starlet and left town for the last time. I can tick the sperm whale off my list now!Heading south west into the mountains behind Kaikora, the little starlet struggled a bit on the steep hairpins but at least it gave me time to admire the views sweeping across the prime grazing valleys of the Hurunui region. At every turn a new postcard shot of a farmstead, sheep or cattle grazing, a woolshed or barn. It is just lovely. About 2 hours later around 2pm I pulled into the YHA in Hanmer Springs. This small township nestles in the foothills of the high country with a wide river valley nearby. I’m sure it all has names, but I don’t know them. By winter this is a ski resort, by summer it has thermal pools and a spa – which are also a winter attraction I suppose but without the snow, there is nothing else to do here but soak your skin in sulphur and other noxious minerals all in the name of good health and cleansing. I had hoped for a tranquil period of relaxation in the mountains as the brochure had promised (photos of models reclining in pools of blue crystal water with gently rising steam and natural looking rock formations lining the pool alongside indiginous vegetation…and the snow capped mountains in the near distance). What I actually experienced was a noisy area under construction alongside a few ‘nice’ pools filled with far too many people, some very ordinary swimming pools and much too much general noise from kids screaming, parents yelling to their kids who couldn’t hear them above the screaming and hammers & drills. Shame. After one hour of trying to find a quiet spot to relax, I gave up, bought a greek salad from the resturant and sat in the shade with some well thumbed glamour magazines. This passed the time well and after learning about the romances and problems of Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Britney Spears with a flat white coffee and garlic breath strong enough to melt an entire country of vampires, I was ready for some spa treatment! It was with a feeling of intense superiority that I strolled from the ‘public’ pools to the ‘private’ spa through frosted glass doors where the atmosphere was transformed by cool air and music resembling whales playing harps from the ocean bed with zombie like people wandering about in white robes and slippers. I had a lovely sauna all to myself then a 60 minute massage – heaven. The only problem was the lack of hot water (one of the builders had drilled through a pipe or something) so I took a cold shower which is no good at all for removing the slimey massage cream from my body. Back at the hostel I met some folk in the kitchen – David (about 60) from UK but now in NZL sailed for 8 years around the world before settling here travelling with Jack (30 ish and from Singapore) who was a teacher (not sure of their relationship and didn;t like to ask) and a girl from Austria – and here is an example of how small the travelling world can be: When I was in Christchurch 2 weeks ago I saw a woman talking to the desk about where to get her stitched removed from a cut on her head… I paid little attention, but it was the same woman. Her stitches removed and all healing well. Apprently she slipped on a metal step at Franz Joseph ,.. or something. A few other girls arrived on ther hostel and hired a DVD which we all sat and watched before bed at 11pm. I left the next day bound for the south of the south island.
