Oamaru and the Blue Penguins 18 Feb

Day three in New Zealand saw us making our first long drive of the holiday, south from Christchurch to Oamaru. We were struck by just how flat the whole journey was, but then they're not called the Canterbury Plains for nothing. We noticed that almost everywhere you looked there were very high hedges, or windbreaks would be a better description as the wind really whips across this area. We just loved the easy driving on virtually traffic-free roads compared to back home, it was so relaxing. We stopped in a place called Timaru for a break where we discovered a pretty place called Caroline's Bay for a nice walk out to the beach.

Arriving in Oamaru we checked-in to our Backpacker hostel where we just about squeezed our luggage into our room. The manageress was a friendly, helpful lady who gave us some good tips on where to eat and so on.

Our evening in Oamaru can only be described as amazing. We had booked to see the Penguins come ashore at the Blue Penguin Colony and I don't think anything could have prepared us for how incredibly adorable and cute these little creatures are. As it was getting dark we started seeing them half running, half stumbling along with their bodies almost horizontal to reach their nesting area. We were very glad of our premium seating as that gave us a really close-up view as each raft of penguins came in. After watching and hearing them calling to each other for about an hour we exited back across a boardwalk, where the Penguins' cuteness only increased as we saw them in or near their nesting boxes, looking small, plump and adorable. We wish we had been able to teleport Justin in from Canterbury to see them, he would have loved them.