January 11, 2024
Nick and I with our new best friend.
Tiny, blue, and so monumentally cute that you almost felt the need for an insulin shot to counteract the sweetness. The smallest penguins in the world, the little blue penguins, one of five penguin species found in New Zealand, take the whole adorable penguin vibe to a galactic level. We arrived in the town of Oamaru, which turned out to be just as cute as the penguins that have colonized their harbor. We were told to get a ticket to watch the little blue penguins come back at sunset from a day of feeding in the South Pacific. We had no idea what to expect and it still surprised us.
Rescued little blue penguins. Note the color. I didn’t retouch the photo!
After a long day of feeding in the Pacific, they generally head home around sunset to return to their nests to feed babies, court their neighbor, or just chill. The penguin colony in the Oamaru Bay developed in the late 1980s and conservation groups immediately helped the little blues keep their spot. As protection and to raise funds for research, the Little Blue Penguin Colony (a non-profit) was organized in 1992. To facilitate educating the public and at the same time protecting the little blues, a small “stadium” with bleachers was built to allow the public to watch the penguins as they arrived in “rafts,” groups of 15 to 50 penguins traveling together, back from their day of feeding.
The guide filled us with little blue penguin facts and behaviors, then made sure we were quiet and respectful as the little blues arrived in small swarms. It was past 9:00 pm when the first raft tumbled from the small waves onto the rocks. As they got their balance, their instincts took hold and they headed up the rocks to their burrows on the shore. Watching these barely foot tall waddling bodies navigate the rocks, larger than they were, was about as entertaining as mother nature gets. They used their beaks to judge the height of the rock in front of them, then made a gallant attempt at jumping up while trying to grab the rocks with their webbed feet. Needless to say, they were very good at tumbling down and starting again. When they had made it to the dirt and grass at the top of the rocks, they once again got their bearings, fortunately due to poor eyesight, weren’t really able to see the human audience, then, en masse, waddled off to find their burrows and loved ones. Some of them broke through the fence which protected them from us and waddled through the bleachers taking an alternate route, which allowed us close-ups. It was, by far, the most evening entertainment of our trip so far!
Oamaru had been built in the early 1900s as a commercial marine center with warehouses and a vital harbor. The local white limestone was mined from nearby hills to build the many warehouses by the docks. The whitestone buildings became a part of the Oamaru architecture and the Victorian style warehouses have been re-born into eclectic shops and restaurants.
L: Nick thought he could make the Alps to Ocean Trail on his bike, but couldn’t quite get it moving forward. We thought it might qualify us for the A2O pizza. R: I must admit I have never had a lemon served with a pizza. It should have been a warning. Weird but not horrible.
Bicycling is huge in New Zealand and there are many well-established trails. One of them is dubbed the A-2-O, Alps to Ocean trail which starts at Mt. Cook (where we were the day before) goes down the mountain then east to the coast at Oamaru…or in other words, the road we just traveled. As Oamaru is the trail end, there are plenty of businesses catering to the bicycling crowd, including Scott’s Brewery which is brilliantly sited about 50 feet from the end of the trail. Despite the fact that we did not have a two-wheeled conveyance nor were we within 30 years of the next oldest customer, we ordered a brew and A2O pizza. The pizza had smoked salmon (a nod to the salmon fishery along the route), cheese (from the dairies along the way), bacon (from the pig farm along the route), and shrimp (from the ocean end of the trail)…A thin crust with a smear of tomato sauce, all the fixings and then topped with a drizzle of siriacha mayonnaise. Intriguing, but once is enough.
OK. Another “Where’s Nick?” He’s there. I swear, but you will need to zoom in!
As if little blue penguins weren’t enough, we saw elephants. Massive weathered limestone boulders, dubbed the Elephant rocks, created a surreal landscape, particularly when paired with the green pastures dotted with the normalcy of sheep and cows. The Elephant Rocks are part of the Vanished World Trail that incorporates the limestone deposits of nearby gorges that over the millennia have captured sharks, dolphins, carnivorous whales, and other animals of the earlier landscape or more appropriately, seascapes of millions of years ago.
The elephant holding up one of the Elephant Rocks.
From our trail of fossils and boulders, we headed north to visit with friends who had initially hosted my sister and brother-in-law when they visited New Zealand in 1999. Sue and William, along with their then young adult children, Pablo and Elena, visited the farm of Yvonne and Barrie in the beautiful pastoral lands inland from Timaru. Yvonne and Barrie were in the middle of growing their Merino wool business. The two couples became friends and visited Sue and William a couple of times in the States.
L: At the crest of the farm looking down on the sheep from the Land Rover. Middle: Nick is getting the full lesson in Merino sheep. R: I bought a stunning blue Merino wool sweater shortly before this photo. I tried to find the blue sheep that produced the wool. No luck.
In the 25+ years since, Yvonne and Barrie have become THE top Merino wool in the world competing for the #1 spot with an Australian farm. After serving us a lovely lunch in their spectacular house that sits atop a hill that has a peek of Mt. Cook peak 50 miles away, Barrie invited us on a tour of the farm from his Land Rover up steep inclines and through fields where the 2,500 Merino sheep kept busy growing their incredible wool.
Nick, Barrie, Wendy and Yvonne after a lovely afternoon at their farm.
Leaving the sheep behind, we headed for Christchurch for a family reunion. Never a dull moment.
Kia Ora,
~Wendy and Nick