January 6th, 2006 - Penguin Safari

Dunedin is a very nice city that is surprisingly large. We wandered into town and had a rather disappointing tour of the World of Cadbury factory - which was closed and the supplemental tour without the factory walk was pretty lame. None-the-less we did see a ton of chocolate fall in an empty silo for crumb - dried milk, sugar and chocolate mass. There was no fuinctional significance, just for show... Next we wandered through the Octagon and after a failed attempt to scout out the seafood restaurant that we decided to hit that evening, we headed back to our accomodations to get the car and drive to Larnach castle and Seal Point Rd. Larnach Castle boasts to be the only castle in New Zealand, but if you ask me it's a glorified house! A family purchased the house and is charging admission of 20$ for a hunk of junk...the whole castle isn't even open and as Laure was quick to point out all of the furniture on the inside didn't match the era of the house and were randomly layed out just to fill empty space. The gardens were nice and the view from the tower, but otherwise way overpriced for what it was! Next we stopped, at Sandfly bay to try and see some Yellow-eyed penguins, the rarest type of penguin left in the world, which nested nearby. We hiked down the mountain to the water level and as we were walking down the beach to the far end to the hide where the penguins are normally spotted, a penguin started walking across the beach in front of us and into the thickets behind the sand dunes. Laure and I decided to test our tracking skills and followed the footprints into the thick brush. Our efforts were rewarded in finding the little guy from a ten foot distance and an obstructed view, but the only penguin we saw that afternoon. We left him alone and continued down the beach where we saw sea-lions basking in the afternoon sun, and although we waited for half an hour, there were no yellow-eyed penguins to be seen. On our way out, we were startled by a sleeping sea-lion that had crawled to the foot of the trail from the hide while we were all inside. We trekked up the sandy slope and back into town for our predetermined sea-food meal. I tried the grilled flounder and Laure had about 5 Crabs. I wasn't expecting to have the head still on the fish when I had to eat it and was a little unsure as to whether I was supposed to eat the skin, it's OK though because Laure was too pre-occupied making a mess with her Crab to notice!