Stone, anyone?

This may look like just a stone. Nothing interesting, perhaps. It is special, however. This stone comes from the bum of something like this!

When I went to the Otago Peninsula in August, our guide found this stone and asked who wanted it. A British woman immediately grabbed it. She was faster than I was. I expressed interest in finding another one and in her infinite kindness, the woman gave me hers instead.

It is a poop stone!

Sea lions swallow these stones to help them digest their food and then they poop them out all nice and smooth.

Lucky me to have possession of such a thing!

(refer back to entry on Otago Peninsula if you'd like to know a bit more about these giants!)

Wildlife Adventures - Otago Peninsula

I took a wildlife tour with Elm Wildlife Tours, a guided tour of the only albatross colony on land (inhabited land) a shag colony, a fur seal colony, a sea lion colony and a blue and yellow-eyed penguin colony. It was an afternoon of awesome sights!

Albatross are not easy birds to view, especially this time of year when most are out at sea. A real sea bird, albatross spend most of the year literally living out on the sea. They are the world's largest sea bird, with a wingspan of up to 3 meters! Very cool! We saw only a couple pretty far out with the aid of binoculars.

The spotted shag colony is quite cool because during breeding times their faces take on an iridescent green sheen. You can't really see that with the pictures I took, but I promise it was cool. As we were looking out to sea at one albatross that was sitting in the ocean, we saw the unmistakeable spouts of whales in the distance. It was really cool! But that was the extent of what we saw of the whales.

Shag Colony

Afterwards we went to a private sheep farm on the edge of the Otago Peninsula. This farmer has the distinct luck of having colonies of seals, sea lions and penguins on his land! He's agreed to allow people like me go out there and view these animals in their natural environment through the Elm Wildlife Tours company. It was really cool. Some pics!

Cute as!

Playing dead! I really thought it was dead for a while because of the awkward position it was in, until it finally moved. Thank God! I was getting worried! Apparently fur seals have really maleable bones and can be comfortable in the most awkward of positions.


Taken through the binoculars. Pretty cool, huh?


Yellow-eyed penguins are the rarest penguins in the world. They are also very shy and very private penguins. They nest up in the brush, quite different from other penguins.

Isn't it cute?

Then we encountered the sea lions! Wow! This one below was yawning. Too bad it didn't come out clearly but pretty impressive nonetheless!

Here he is posing (in fact he is going to the bathroom and we were subject to this "private" moment). Didn't seem to bother him too much!

I was less than 2 meters away from him!

Below: a little vid of this young sea lion.

Evening on the beach. Ahh....peaceful.

A yellow-eyed penguin coming home for the night

Below: coming home

All coming home

Below: a love match or a territorial dispute?

Dunedin

Dunedin Train Station

I went to Dunedin on two separate occasions, but only did a bit of visiting the first time around. Some travelers had described it as nothing special, but I found it really charming, with pretty buildings and an interesting city center. The downtown area is called the Octagon and is actually shaped in that way, with two main streets forming an inner and an outer Octagon. Sitting at one of the many cafes in the Octagon is a good way to people watch and get a feel for the city.

I stayed at a backpackers called Hogwartz (obviously named after Harry Potter), only really worth noting because of its beautiful architecture and sense of isolation within its walls. Its located in a wooden area, but close enough to the center of the city as not to feel cut off. Dunedin, as many cities in New Zealand are, is quite hilly so expect to puff a bit. Good exercise though!

Hogwartz backpackers




One of tons of cathedrals in this city

The Otago Museum is a must see museum, rife with exhibits from around the world as well as some interesting facts about the Ngai Tahu Iwi of the South Island and extinct birds of New Zealand's past. I skipped over the stuff not directly related to New Zealand because I didn't have the energy to see every exhibit, but even the two exhibits I did see took me a couple of hours (and I didn't comb through every single thing as I usually do).

It was fascinating to learn about Moa, the largest flightless bird in the world, and other flightless birds that have become extinct since the arrival of Maoris. An interesting and somewhat unbelievable fact about New Zealand is that apart from the bat, New Zealand does not have any native mammals. This is why there was such a high concentration of flightless birds here. There were no natural predators so they thrived. Really cool exhibit!

Back in the Octagon is the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and they had an exhibit on Dunedin born Frances Hodgkins. I wanted to see what she was about. She was a watercolor painter who went and made it big in Europe in the early 1900s. There were quite a few things that I loved, but again I couldn't find most of them on the internet. Isn't that just a pain in the butt?

Hope you do like what you see below!