Sunday morning we were greeted by a beautiful morning and empty stomachs-especially me since my tapas the night before were slightly on the inedible side. We left our lovely backpackers and were off to remedy growling beast in my belly. According to our Lonely Planet book, we had a large number of delicious sounding cafes to choose from. There was just one hitch...it was
ANZAC Day. ANZAC Day commemorates all New Zealanders killed in war and also honours returned servicemen and women. Holidays in New Zealand also mean that almost all shops and cafes are closed because they have to pay their employees time and half-so if anything is open they usually charge a surcharge to customers. This led us on a bit of a journey across Dunedin to find our morning feast and we found it-at Governor's Cafe. There is a right way and a wrong way to do bacon pancakes and they do them the right way: A stack of pancakes, bacon, and bananas drenched in maple syrup and topped with powdered sugar which is about a thousand times better than another version I've had that was essentially pancakes with bacon bits baked in and was, unfortunately, gross.
The beautiful morning made a trip to the Otago Peninsula seem like a perfect idea, even if we didn't really know what we were going to do once we got there. Since the peninsula is called the wildlife capital of New Zealand and boasts that it has penguins, seals (not
Seal), sea lions, royal albatross, and the only castle in New Zealand, we had a few options to choose from. We decided to drive to the tip of the peninsula since we've always had luck with whats at the end of the road and because I wasn't very useful at reading all the descriptions of what to do while we were driving along a windy road with a pot of tea and heaping portion of bacon pancakes in my stomach.
At Taiaroa Point is a beautiful view, a light house, two different types of shags-including the
Stewart Island Shag (shags are a kind of bird-what did you think I was talking about?) and the world's only mainland royal albatross colony. Seeing the shags and the view were free, but the albatrosses were another story!
Thinking that it was a steep $30 per person to see the albatross, we decided that it was just one of those things that you have to do there-I mean it's the only mainland colony in the
world! We walked in the visitor center and found out that was $40! per person...you've got to be kidding me! But since it was ANZAC day they were throwing in the tour of the remains of the fort underneath the albatross center for free. This made the $16 we paid at the historical house the day before seem exceptionally reasonable! Since the albatross is a wild animal they couldn't guarantee that they would even be flying, but they could guarantee that we would see three chicks.
Walking out to the viewing platform we saw three birds and one looked so big I thought it was a fully grown albatross-I was wrong! The chicks are adorable, ridiculously huge, fluffy things.
After standing around for about 15 minutes watching the 3 chicks napping, an adult albatross finally flew by and there was a collective gasp in awe from all of us in the viewing room. This was just the beginning and we ended up seeing 3-4 adults flying around. From our view we couldn't really see them land or take off-but there was a camera looking over the hill where we could watch these giant creatures and their amazing awkward landings.
After our time was up watching the albatrosses, we got to check out Fort Taiaroa. The main event at the Fort is the 1886 Armstrong Disappearing Gun that was built because the Kiwi's were certain that the Russians were going to attack-but they didn't. The disappearing gun does exactly that-it's loaded underground, then pops up and shoots, then pops back underground-and it still works-so maybe you should think twice about attacking New Zealand-I mean they have at least one working gun!
On the drive back from the albatross colony we stopped at a little art gallery and chatted for a while with the artist's wife. The paintings were mostly landscapes and they all looked very familiar. There was Milford Sound, the Maniototo, the Clutha River around Alex...all places we have been so far! Surprisingly we didn't pick anything up, but I wouldn't be surprised if we stop there again. On the suggestion of the artist's wife we took a 'high road' back to Dunedin and stopped at Sandfly Bay (where there are no sandflies-thank goodness!) for a picnic lunch. The drive gave us a whole different view of the Otago peninsula and our lunch spot was gorgeous-even if it was pretty windy and we had to watch out for sheep poo.
After a quick stop at the Pack and Save grocery store we were on our way back to Alex. We hadn't been 'home' for almost 10 days straight and now we're here for the next 4 weeks-expect of course weekends :)
No comments:
Post a Comment