Day 51- Oamaru- the Canadian gets his wish

Our next day involved a short (3 hour) drive to Oamaru. This town was fairly large- I would estimate about 20+ thousand people in the city, though it is incredibly difficult to tell when you are only there for a day. Unlike the other cities, towns and * ahem * villages we had visited, Oamaru had a distinctively European feel. The buildings and courthouses are stone, with columns and fancy engravings. The streets are wide with houses on the hills in English style. It was a nice refresher- after a week of passing through places that seemed to have little or no architectural history, a flair of old Europe was welcome. We walked through botanical gardens, had lunch, and then piled in ‘the space ship’ (our van). We drove up a ridge to a yellow- eyed penguin colony. This is where the title of the post comes in.

Andrew, our resident Canadian, loves penguins. He gets excited when we drive past a penguin crossing road sign (and believe me, there are quite a few). His favorite includes a silhouette of a penguin, with the word ‘penguin’ below it- there is no explanation, no ‘penguin Xing’, or ‘watch for penguins’. It is almost as though the sign was a small contender in a country wide animal matching game. As we drove to the colony (on top of a cliff) I saw the first wild penguin of my life- and it was right in front of us. Andrew was as happy as a kid on Christmas day- he was literally jumping up and down, on the verge of pushing children over the railing in order to get closer to this peculiar bird. We snapped some photos, and the penguin waddled away down the cliff. How it got from the beach up this shear rock wall, we didn’t know. In an instant it was gone.
We spent the next hour or so sitting on the cliff edge, watching the penguins swim up to shore and waddle through the waves to their nests. As soon as they stood up, they would begin to march past the waves in an awkward yet charming fashion. Unfortunately, they were on the surf- we were 80 feet up on a limestone cliff. It began to get cold, and some members began to walk back. Those that stayed (me, Jens and Andrew) were rewarded when another penguin came up even closer than the last, literally within reach of us. We got some pictures, Andrew almost had a heart attack, and before we knew it we were fed up with the cold and on our way back to town. On the way we stopped for a brief tour at a Blue penguin colony- but this one wasn’t free, so not all of us went. It turned out the tour was an hour long- those that didn’t attend read newspapers to catch up on current events (of which there were quite a few- North Korea, UK terrorists, Pirates, and Fiji’s new dictatorship). We finally returned to the hostel (over 100 years old), made dinner, and soon went to bed.