Dunedin - where?

Dunedin - university town and supposedly like Edinburgh (now on East coast of South Island). Actually, it's nothing like it. Still it has some pretty special wildlife which I was lucky enough to see - in fact get pretty up close and personal with - so a real honour in many ways.

On the day we arrived, I took the Elm Wildlife tour to the Otago peninsula. The first wildlfe spectacular was getting to see Royal Albatross not only flying around above our heads, but also nesting on the only main-land nesting site in the world. It was amazing and they are soo big.

Next stop was down to the beach front where we saw NZ fur seals and their pups. The colony were happy enough getting on with it whilst we all peered over the edge of a hide all of 10 meters away from them. The pups were incredibly playfull and lolled around in rock pools waiting for the mothers to return from feeding.

Moving on, we got the chance to see sea-lions up close on the beach. There was an anxiety provoking moment when one of them thought we might be good fun to play with, but as our guide was an MA student studying them as part of his course in Marine Biology, we were in safe hands as he told us what to do, where to stand etc... Not only this, but he was able to give us an excellent insight into all the wildlife we saw - I was very impressed. The sea-lions were huge and incredibly powerful looking. I really did feel very lucky.


Finally, we saw yellow-eyed penguins coming in from the sea to nest for the night. I can't, once again, describe how special the whole thing was... I saw three endangered species all on one night (NZ fur seals are not endangered, but everything else is). I also saw them in their natural habitat, doing what they should be and being undisturbed by us and our small, very well guided group. Just how it should be!

The following day it absolutely pelted it down all day.... what better excuse for a trip around the Cadbury's Chocolate Factory! All I'll say is that the smell was delicious and they had a whole, huge silo totally dedicated to something completely useless - a chocolate waterfall which drops one tonne of chocolate down in front of you in all of 30 secs. A great idea. You also got freebies.... yum.