It is Saturday morning, we are at Erin's apartment in Wellington. Erin was trying to download some pictures yesterday, but was unsuccessful. She will try again today. Just a brief update since our last entry. She did put pictures on facebook, though.
My last entry was Wednesday morning. Wednesday was kind of our day to relax. Erin stayed at the hotel pretty much all day, read her book and did this wooden balancing penguin game/puzzle that we got at Penguin Place. In the morning, I drove to Allen's beach on the Otago peninsula (just a 10 minute drive on a gravel road). This beach had signs indicating that the Yellow-Eyed penguin sometimes hung out there. It was a huge beach, at least a mile long. There was a rocky shoreline to the left, where I saw several sea lions sunning on the rocks. To the right was a long beach with grassy bluffs. Because I like walking on the beach, I started walking. There were no other people on the beach. About one half mile down the beach, I spotted a yellow-eyed penguin sitting on the bluff. I got within about 10 feet of him, and of course took some pictures. The yellow-eyed penguins are molting at this time of year, and when they are molting, they stay on land all day. It is quite rare to see penguins on your own. Usually you will only see them when you go on the tours, because they have private protected habitat for the penguins. I was pretty excited about it, but felt bad that Erin was not along.
Later after we had lunch, I drove to the Albatross Center. The albatross is a large, fairly rare bird, that uses this area as a nesting ground. There is also a lighthouse in this area (the one that Erin took a picture of when she was in Dunedin earlier). I did see one albatross flying overhead.
Thursday, we left the Otago peninsula about 9:30 am. and drove toward Christchurch. We stopped at several lookout points along the way. A very interesting place is the Moeraki boulders. They are a collection of very round large boulders along the shoreline, with interesting lines and shapes in them. We also stopped at Omaru, which has a tour for the little blue penguin. They however were not offering tours that day. We arrived in Christchurch airport at about 5:00 pm, dropped off our rental car, checked our luggage, and walked over to the Antarctic Centre. Christchurch is the stopping off point for all flights to the Antarctic. The center has information and demonstrations about the Antarctic, but it also has live Blue Penguins!! Of course, that is why we went. We then flew back to Wellington at 8:20 pm. We got to Erin's apartment about 11:00 pm.
Friday we slept late, Erin did laundry, and we walked to the Museum of New Zealand down by the harbor in Wellington. This is a very large place, with everything you want to know about New Zealand. We only saw about half of the exhibits and then got tired. We walked to the grocery store to buy Erin's next week of groceries, and then proceeded to walk back uphill to her apartment. This is a long difficult climb!!
My plane leaves today, Saturday, at 4:00 pm. I will arrive in Mpls at 9:30 pm Saturday. That doesn't sound bad, 5 hours!
