Edge of the Ocean (or Installment 3)

Because we were spending 2 nights in Dunedin, we wanted to spend the day at the Otago Peninsula which is where you can see penguins, seals, sealions, etc. What we didn’t know was that the road to get there was one of many winding roads where I thought I might die falling down a cliff. I swear, the ocean was not even feet away from our car with a giant cliff on the other side of the lane. AWESOME. Even though I did fear for my life at several points, Daniel managed to keep us on the road and the sights were really beautiful and idyllic (I feel like I’m narrating a children’s book…) Anyways, we made it to this place called the Albatross Center. Apparently though, the albatross had migrated to Africa or South America or somewhere so they weren’t in New Zealand. They would have been cool to see but in all honesty, I was under the impression that an albatross was a type of fish, so…

But while we were there, we got to walk down to the beach where we saw seals! Like actual seals sitting on the rocks and jumping in and out of the water. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a seal outside of a zoo so that was pretty cool. One thing we all really wanted to do before the day was up was see a penguin. We heard that if you go down Seal Point Rd. (Clever, huh?) you could maybe see sealions and penguins. So we drove the windy roads up and down to get to Seal Point where we descended down the most gigantic sand dune I think I’ve ever been on in my entire life (even bigger than the one at Warren Dunes). At the bottom, there were all these sealions just laying on the beach… like we probably saw about 10 of them just laying there! It blew my mind. Obviously we didn’t want to get too close because these things were pretty massive but at one point, I was at least 10 feet away from a gigantic barking sealion (slowly backing away of course). Sometimes they would flop over or shimmy (do they shimmy? Maybe shimmy isn’t the best word, more like drag) themselves over into the water and there were two that were fighting. The pictures are incredible. But we had not seen a penguin yet. We went up to this blind where you have to sit and watch penguins or else they won’t come out. We probably sat in there for a good half hour before Anja was like “Wait, what’s that white thing on the grass?” And lo and behold, we saw our penguin. Sitting above the rocks on the grass. He didn’t do a lot, except maybe flip over one time but at least we got to say we saw one which is all that really counts…

We drove back through Dunedin, climbing the steep streets, and picked up more groceries (where we found bagels! I can honestly say a Parmesan bagel has never tasted so good in my whole life). After dinner, we went downtown to go to the Speights Brewery Tour. Speights is this really popular NZ beer and it is made in Dunedin so we got a tour and a tasting which was pretty fun. We were going to go out for the night, but it ended up raining so we played Life (which was a major blast from the past considering I haven’t played that since I was about 11). But overall, Dunedin was beautiful and I would definitely go back and visit there someday.