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Other entries in Oamaru

limestone and penguins

It was such a clear and crisp morning this morning there were great views of mount cook and the other mountains. It was still very cold, all the puddles had frozen, so when I had my free shower it was awesome I managed to steam up the entire bathroom. Then we made our way to Omaru passing the Wrinkly Rams, a big truck in a tunnel section, a limestone thing, Maori rock paintings, some dams and some elephant rocks. Then eventually, not many signs here, we found the camp. We booked a tour for the evening and then walked into town as we had time spare. The walk was nice through a Chinese style garden with lots of ornaments and hundreds of evil ducks, that are trying to take over the world…dontcha know.

As it was a Saturday afternoon we thought it would be nice to look around the shops…but no…not a chance. On Saturdays everything shuts, apart from Farmers (M & S) and the two pubs…there isn’t even an Irish pub!!! It is like an old cowboy town, I was waiting for someone to step out and tell me this town wasn’t big enough for the two of us!! However the architecture is awesome all made from Omaru Stone, a very good lime stone. So we grabbed a beer and some chips at Fat Sally’s before heading back to the van.

We were soon picked up by Bruce our tour guide for the evening and set out so find some penguins. We were taken to a point on the coast as we were going to try and spot some yellow eyed penguins, the worlds rarest penguin. We were told that the Maori call the Hoiho as they have a very loud call and we soon found out that it was true, very noisy. We walked down a small path and tried to spot a few of the penguins coming into the beach from the ocean, there were a couple but they are very small so we couldn’t see them very well. Then to our surprise there were two right in front of us about 10 feet or so away just standing on the hill, it was cool and so were they. They milled around for a bit and we took some photos before having to head off to see the other penguin on our tour, the blue penguin. There is an actual seating section for these guys as they come in at the same place every night so it has been set up by the department of conservation. These guys are tiny but there were loads of them and they had their funny little run it was really good to see them. Then Bruce took us around the old town in his van and gave us the history of the town which is pretty interesting, then he dropped us back at Fat Sally’s where we watched the All Blacks against France. After the game we headed to camp.

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