After the cadbury's factory I drove to the Otago penisula. It's a lovely scenic route, the same way you go to the launach castle then beyond. The most priety windy roads ever.
I took a few tournings off the road to go nearer the caost which was lovely although hair razing at first in the camper. For a start i am not sure if the cam,pers are allowed down these tracks as they are narrow gravel paths. The hills are a bit of work in the camper as its like driving a 10 ton lorry up a 75%grade slope but I coped. The weather wasn't great as was raining. Should have done this yesterday.
Anyhow I found a beautiful bay at the end of this road and you had to walk through some dunes to get there. It was a lovely sandy beach inbetween the cliffs. Quite large but I was the only one there so that was great.
I also drove along alans road which is another gravel track that follows the estury.
After that I stopped at portebello and had thebest boisenberry ( i think they are like logan berry's) and apple fruit juice. That hit the spot but not as much as the roast lamb dinner with roast potatoes, veg and most improtant mint jelly. Wow! Well it was a sunday and I needed comfort food as cold.
After that i went on from portebello to the aquarium and marine station where they do research into the marine life of teh penisula. Great for kids just follow the yellow crab trail painted on teh path.
The aquarium wasn't much but interesting to see how much the marine life is differnt from oz.ots of cray fish, star fish, cod, kelp, mussells and that kind of thing.
After that it was onwards to the albatros centre. I was too late for the tour and the guy said go through and have a look. So i just followed some people they stopped at the gate and teh tour guide ( i didn't realise that at the time) did a head count realised she had one extra to which i owned up on, so I had to go back down. I think I did see an albatross flying though. Not that you can see much just a huge wing span.
After that I went to nature's wonder. It is now bleak and very cold. Natures wonders is a private company run by a farmer who wons this part/end of the peninsula. He sheep farms but had an idea to get these little 4x4 buggies from canada which are used to go over snow, and use them on his farm over mud tracks.
Great idea and a little bit of an adrenline rush going down these steep narrow hills. Great fun though. He takes you to the point where you are suppossed tyo be able to see dunedin on a clear day. Not today.
After that you go past the seals on the rocks, keeping warm. They are a couple of hundred yards away but the nearest I have seen wild seals. Then they take you to this hide. In the hide on the right you see the baby seals through tiny wired windows. They are so cute. Lots of fleas though and teh males smell. They leave their scent like dogs aparenlty. There were about six baby ones on the other side of this window, less than a meter away. It was so amazing and cute.
After that we saw the cormorents sheltering on the cliffs then on the way to watch the yellow eyed penguins the car broke down. A coil snapped. So the guide sent us off to the penguin hide while he phoned for another pick up.
Well we had some binoculars but my video camera has an excleent zoon although it goes really wabberly ehn i zoom in. Maybe that's just me.
Anyhow we looked in the bush and didn't see any penguins as we were told their might be. So we watched the beach for a few minutes. Then one came, then the other. About 3 all staggered. They were easy to spot as the beach was filled of sea gulls all facing the sea. Then you would see these funny long black shapes with flashes of white going in the other direction but moving differently. They were so funny to watch their little waddles as they headed inland after their evening feed. The yellow penguins are very rare and only found on the south coast (theotago peninsula basically).
Well after 15 mins we saw about 10-14 of these funny creatures. As thebus had broken down we got to see a few more as we were running 10 mins late. I met two nice ladies from dunedin on a day trip and a nice french girl who sat up front of the little car and sheltered me from the rain. She is doing the same train trip with me from dunedin tomorrow.
Well we got back and I drove back to dunedin on the most windy coastal road ever in the pouring rain. Got back and was absolutely nackered. Had done about 600k by this point.
Just a nature note. New zealand, like austrailia has problems with species that have been introduced. When NZ broke away from austrailia it had no mamals on it except a really small bat.
The english introduced 3 plants. Firstly broom or gorse which reminded them of home. This has now been classified a weed as is spreading through NZ like wildfire and choking anything in its path.
Also their is the willow. Again we planted it by riversides to remind us of home. As it has adapted to the NZ climate it's become brittle and breaks off really easily blocking rivers and causing havoc.
The possum. Introduced to NZ by the OZies. This has now become such a pest because it has been damaging and killing a lot of the trees. Because it has no predators as there are no mamals its been breeding like wildfire. The government encourages the killing of possums now and its easy to get a liscnece for a gun and go out hunting. In fact its odd if you don't. So either shoot them, trap them (not humanley of course), run them over with your car, however you want to do it you wil get $15 for the skin. Infact possum made goods are encouraged here. The trees here have not been used to any wildlife attacking them (mamal thing again), so when they sprout new leaves they are quite defensless against the possums who then come along and eat new shoots. Some trees will only try to produce leaves 3 times. If a possum gets them 3 times then they will just give up and die.
Next problem. Rabits which we introduced. Spread like wildfire as no predators, then what do we do we introduce stoats to get the rabits. What happens as neither have natural predators and a lot of the birds that originated on the island had previously had no threat of mamals had learnt that they don't nbeed to fly so were more ground dwellers like the kiwi etc. So what happens the stoats decide these are better food and easy prey and funny enough lots of them. So what happens a lot of the ground birds have become extinct about 150 species.
It's a bit like that song I swallowed a spider to catch a fly...I swallowed a bird to cath a spider etc.... good thing no ones introduced foxses to get them both.
Next problem deer. We introduced them and no one kept an eye on them till one day oops, again no predators the deer go balistic. So wjhat happens competition shoot out. The governement pays anyone to capture the deer, paying up $1000 a deer at one point. All they had to provide as proof was the deers tail. So what hapopens they go balistioc. People in helicopters go over land and just shoot any deer that moves then collect the hides. The record I think was 210 in one day. lot of venison. Now rather than hunt they farm it but bnew zealanders find the taste very strong so it gets shipped off to germany. You want to see the amount of elks here.
In milfords sound they also introduced a colony of about 50 moose. They havn't sighted any for years but they recon they could still be out there. One guy was looking for about 20 years and still not sighted one but theirs still belief.
Oh and last because of the amount of agriculture that NZ has the waste has been going into the sea's. Blue cod is becomming smaller and less of and a couple of species are now extinct. No wander they have the methaine tax (fart tax).
Posted by alexd at August 3, 2004 10:15 AM