penguins!

Back in Timaru now, I spent Friday morning walking into town and doing a little bit of retail therapy (not really that much to speak of in Timaru but there's a nice design store with some cool stuff). Met Dad for lunch on the Bay Hill at Coast (formerly Zanzibar's) - had some lovely, huge mussels in a coconut milk sauce.

On Saturday, Dad and I went for a walk down to the Bay to see the Aoraki final of the Young Farmer of the Year competition - they were ploughing, welding, organising sheep and digging. The Bay is getting so huge as the water goes out and out, so there's loads of room for this kind of thing to be set up.

Fiona and John came down in the afternoon and then we all drove down to Oamaru to see the Little Blue Penguins come ashore at the sanctuary. There is a viewing grandstand there - tickets cost $17.50 each and there is one of the staff commentating as the penguins arrive. It's quite quiet at the moment but we saw about 40 penguins arrive. They are tiny! Only about 30 cm high. They come ashore and then have to cross across this gravel track before they get to the safety of the nesting houses that have been built for them. They are quite cautious when they come to cross across and a few groups waited for ages before crossing - we had to be really quiet so that they were encouraged and didn't think there were predators waiting for them. The penguins were really noisy once they got to the nesting area - calling out to each other and making mating calls. We were there for about an hour and really enjoyed it. We were told to be careful when we left as penguins often wander across the road, and sure enough we had to stop and wait for one to cross!

We had dinner at the Riverstone Kitchen, about 20 km north of Oamaru. It was a lovely meal - quite a new place, and using a lot of local ingredients. We all, apart from John, had roast Havoc pork for our main - yum!