Dunedin & The Otago Peninsula

Close-up view of the yellow-eyed penguin.
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After a long drive from Te Anau, we finally made it to Dunedin.  It's a beautiful city set in the hills of the southern east coast of the south island.  A number of universities there give the city a college-town feel with a lot of students and cheap eats.

We started by heading to the steepest driveable street in the world, St. north of the city.  While it was steep, it didn't really feel all that different from San Francisco.  We ate at a phenomenal Mexican restaurant (see review) giving us many of the flavors we've been missing for the past 2 months.

the penguins return from the sea after a day of hunting

cute sign.
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That night we stayed at the worst holiday home (called bach here) EVER!  See the review of the Seaside Historic Cottage for details.  In summary the highlights of the horror include: 1. Half-mile nighttime hike along a narrow seaside path to find the cottage, 2. arriving only to find the keys were hidden in a place the owner never told us about, 3. Indira needing to approach a rundown neighbors house straight out of a horror movie to call the owner to find the keys, 4. learning each room was actually a separate little cottage on the property, including the bathroom and Avani's room (sure, not a problem to let a toddler sleep her own separate cottage at water's edge), and 5. Running completely out of ALL water while mid-shower, mid-soap, with the owner later responding, "hmmm, I would have thought it would have rained more."  What!  We were relying on rainwater!!  Ridiculous!!!

Magic happens on the steepest driveable road in the world.
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We pressed on.  The next day was nature day on the Otago Peninsula.  We started at the Royal Albatross Center.  Albatross spend the majority of their lives flying or resting on the water.  The Otago Peninsula is one of the few places in the world where albatross come onto land to nest.  Since it was a windy day, we could see albatrosses flying just outside of the center.  They are HUGE birds that glide through the air with ease.  There were still a few nests left that we could see from the lookouts with juvenile birds still residing in them.  We saw the parents return to the nests after a day of fishing.

Hanging out in downtown Dunedin.
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Next we headed to The Penguin Place.  Our only experience with penguins has been at zoos so we were very excited to see them in the wild.  This place is nicely setup for yellow-eyed penguin viewing in their natural habitat with minimal disturbance to them.  Basically it is a series of trenches covered with netting and camouflage tarps through which we walk to the shoreline to view the yellow-eyed penguins.  We were lucky, arriving later in the day at a time when the penguins return from the sea after a day of hunting.  We saw about 8 penguins waddling there way up the beach, and about 4 of them came right up near to where we were viewing.  They are very cute.  Avani liked it a lot and did surprisingly well in the trenches.