Penguins in New Zealand?

The long road back to the coast from Mt Cook National Park doesn't offer much in the way of attractions, but it sure is a beauty! On the southern end of the Mackenzie Country we stopped at the Clay Cliffs just off the highway near Omarama for more arid wild west style badlands landscapes.  A little farther and we crossed into Central Otago which is known as New Zealand's gold country where a few beautiful man made lakes painted the region with deep blue hues to contrast it's natural brown and green foliage.  Pressing on just a bit more and we hit the East Coast again in funky little victorian Oamaru about an hour north of Dunedin (interesting fact - Oamaru was growing up around the same time as Los Angeles and at one time was the more populous city of the two!). We made an unplanned pitstop to wander around the wonderfully preserved Victorian style buildings in the town's historic district and came upon an awesome little museum dedicated to Steampunk art.

Clay Cliffs  

On the road once more we closed most of the remaining distance to Dunedin before coming to camp for the night in Moeraki Village.  Just outside the village is the Katiki Point lighthouse and nature reserve, where we were to get our first glimpse at some of NZ's rarest wildlife - penguins. If you'd have asked me previously I'd have told you that penguins could only be found in the world's coldest regions, mainly areas on and around Antarctica.  Low and behold NZ has a small but healthy population of penguins to call their own!  In fact, NZ is home to a number of penguin species from the blue penguin to the rarest penguin on earth, the yellow eyed penguin (aka YEPs).  This reserve specially tends to the needs of these YEPs and is one of the easiest if not one of the only places in the world where you can see them in the wild and for free.

When we first arrived at the lighthouse and began the walk didn't anything beyond a few empty artificial penguin shelters hidden in the shrubs. The wind was gusting something fierce, dealing penetrating lashes of Antarctic cold right through "protection" of your clothes.  I could see why a penguin might like it here.  A bit farther along the landscape opened up to reveal a large colonies of fur seals which struck me as a bit strange since I thought seals are infamous predators of penguins.  Maybe that's sea lions… Anywho, there were pockets of other tourists in this area gawking down at the rocky headlands, so we joined in.  Upon closer investigation you could see a few distant penguins with arms open to catch the wind resting peacefully right next to the colony of seals.  Being that we didn't have binoculars we walked on, almost tripping on a seal resting within arm's reach of the trail!  The seal didn't seemed concerned with us in the slightest and just kept on snoozing, so we took some sweet photos before moving on to the end of the line.  There we found more seals, this time with pups, and our first ever glimpse of a bull.  

When we'd had our fill we started on our way back to the car figuring this penguin experience was going to be remembered mostly as a seal one.  When we came up and over the first crest we were surprised to see all the tourists huddled together in a semi circle excitedly snapping pictures of…penguins! They had come up from the beach onto the grassy area adjacent to the trail to cool themselves in the freezing wind!  The pair proved quite photogenic as they lazily adjusted their angle to optimize wind catching and we walked away with some fantastic close ups of those nice yellow eyes!