Kiyomi and Ren's Excellent Adventures: Oamaru (try saying it fast 3 times)

December 9, Oamaru

We started the day exploring Dunedin a little. Parked by the train station, which is a rather impressive piece of Victorian architecture and wondered through the central area looking for the Otago Museum. Our search brought us along side part of the Otago University campus, which is one of those ones well integrated into the city. The vintage and feel actually reminded me a little of the Bannatyne Campus of the University of Manitoba - right down to the smell of the hospital cafeteria.

The Otago Museum itself is rather impressive. Unfortunately, with kids in tow, we didn't really get a chance to fully appreciate the collection, but we did see some items (including a scarf and ice ax) beloging to Sir Edmond Hillary, who apparently had a long-standing relationship with the museum. The hightlight for all of us though was a visit to the tropical rain forest room and the thousands of butterflies that inhabit it. The room itself is a multi-story atrium literally teeming with butterflies of all shapes, sizes and colours. There are a few other creatures as well (some turtles, tarantulas, goldfish), but really it's the butterflies that capture all the attention.

After a quick lunch at a Cambodian noodle house, we stumbled upon the graduates parade from the local Polytechnic Institute in Dunedin. A piper band led the parade of graduates all in cap and gowns down one of the central streets of town. The kids, of course loved a parade, and I found it exciting to see all these fresh, young faces beeming with pride.

While Ren napped in the crow's nest of the van, I perused some of the local shops (nothing much to report other than a bag of early season cherries) and then Kohji and Kiyomi checked out Cadbury World (yup it was a chocolate factory). It turned out that Santa was visiting the factory as well, so Kiyomi got to hop on the jolly man's knee and came away with a box of goodies for both her and Ren.

By late afternoon, we were on the road again, bound for Oamaru to see the resident little blue penguin colony. We had a fascinating stop at Moeraki Beach to check out the naturally formed boulders that lay casually strewn across a section of the soft sandy beach. They are rather out of place and have been sculpted by the tide to a smooth, round finish. They aren't even really visible at high tide, and when the tide is out a little, you get to climb all over them, which is of course what we did! It is also a rather lovely beach with a gentle slopped sand bar and awesome beach combing finds, including rainbow coloured little snail shells.

Our ultimate destination for the day was a night viewing of the little blue penguins as they come ashore to nest for the night. A very different experience from the yellow-eyed penguins at Curio Bay. Because the blue penguins here arrive every day at dusk and follow the same route to the nests, there has been an entire tourist center set up for penguin viewing, complete with a grand-stand. The penguins did arrive right on cue, but it took a little away from the the natural simplicity of it to be surrounded by a couple bus loads of Chinese tourists and a narration by the Center's staff. It was definitely an interesting parade, watching the penguins surf into the beach in groups (apparently they gather about 500 meters out in small groups to come in together), struggle their way up the rock embankment, preening and drying off as they climb, and then, making a beeline in a triangle formation to the nesting area (which is all fenced to keep out tourists, but also let in penguins. I will say that they are cute little buggers (the little blues are the smallest penguins) and their waddling formation is worth watching, but I can't say that it felt like we were watching them in their natural environment.

Things to know: little blue penguins are the smallest of the breed. Males are distinguishable from females as they have longer bills and are more aggressive (not that you could tell the difference as they were scuttling along up the rocks).