After leaving Akaroa on Monday morning we set off on our whistle stop tour of the South Island. We went through Timaru and straight on to Oamaru as Greg’s dad told us that there was a blue penguin breeding colony there.
Unfortunately, because the penguins are nocturnal the best viewing times were at night and they had a massive viewing platform where you can watch the penguins come out of the sea and on to the beach.
Up on the beach was a small enclosure where they had lots of small nesting boxes. In a separate building they had set up ten viewing boxes. These look down directly into the nesting boxes so you can see the penguins. We managed to see three penguins in here, it was very dark though so our eyes took some time to adjust!
The lady who showed us around said that on the previous evening over 100 blue penguins came ashore and entered the breeding colony. This is definitely something to put on our ‘to do’ list for the future as it will be great to watch them at night coming out of the sea.
Just before we were about to leave we decided to take a few photos and Eloise suddenly saw a seal on the beach. We managed to get a couple of photos of it before we left.
We couldn’t take any photos of the penguins we did see, so below are a few cheeky penguins we found outside in the car park!
Oamaru itself seemed really nice as we drove through. It looked quite a busy town with lots of businesses and nice residential areas. We also passed some botanical gardens on our way out of town and some lovely old historical buildings. Next stop Dunedin…….