Odds 'n Ends

What can you say? This was an interesting week. We left our friends’ place up on the east coast knowing that two cyclone tailings and a major low pressure trough were coming together to sweep across the entire south island. And it did. The northern 2/3 of the island got smoked, with road closures, wash outs, lost livestock all negative results. We knew it was coming and rather than stew about the lack of fishing (some waters went up 60 fold flow rates), we opted for a more positive approach. Penguin hunting. In 4 years here, we’ve only just skirted looking for penguins and not seen one. So, we returned to the area where we thought it most likely, along the east coast near Moeraki. We got to the viewing blind and 6 people were crammed in looking at the one penguin on the beach. Exciting! We saw it and left, opting to take the advice of someone we`d run into on last year`s trip, telling us to walk up and over the ridge to the grassy hillsides where most of the penguins come in to. So, we traded 1 penguin and 6 people for about 2 dozen penguins and no people. It was neat to get within 8 feet of yellow eyed penguins.

After taking photos and video of the penguins and seals for 2 hours or so, we headed down the road a touch further in search of little blue penguins. These little critters live in the rocks and are only seen in the dark of pre dawn or well after sunset. They spend the majority of their life on their nests or way out to sea fishing. We ran into one local who told us to stand at one spot and the penguins would come, just wait. We did as we were told and we managed to get this shot of a little blue penguin. Pretty neat little birds. We drove around the harbour to another location and saw a gaggle of people waiting for a group of penguins to come ashore and waddle up the boat launch, cross the street and head for the cliffs where their nests were. Little blue penguins aren`t just wilderness birds! It was kind of neat to see, but at the same time also somewhat odd to see the cars of onlookers weaving between the group of 7 penguins and the 50+ people trying to “see” them. There are places to see penguins, and it was a little sad that this colony was so inundated by people. But on the bright side, the awareness of the colonies in the local area has seen their numbers rebound well. And there are much more remote locations to see them if you want to. The other species of penguins we were to look for is the Fiordland crested penguin, but we mis-timed that adventure. A little later or next year.
We continued our drive to avoid the rain. We’d been given a DVD set “NZ Rivers” for Christmas by our friends. While watching the 1hr show on the mighty Clutha, we saw an old punt crossing the river – a free service that ties back to the early gold mining days of the 1890s. This is the last remaining punt and it’s free of charge. The premise is simple... two boat like pontoon that face upstream with a deck that lies perpendicular to the current. The unit is fastened by long cables anchored into each bank and a pulley allows it to swing across the river. Momentum is simply gained by a big rudder into the current and the punt ferries across the river... quickly! The punt operator has been on the job since 1994. The kiosk shows all the punt operators in its history. It’s neat that something so simple has such a history tied to it. Amazing that a man can spend that much time alone with his dog on a small ferry on the banks of a sparsely populated valley. To each our own.
We left the punt and the rain caught up to us on the very southern tip of the island. We were due. Again, we decided to do something we hadn’t to date, and we drove through Dunedin, past the Cadbury chocolate factory, and on to Nugget Point, a cool spot to watch the massive waves rock against the cliffs. If you ever want a neat place to spend a night while in New Zealand, there’s a few accommodations in the area. The beaches are very nice on the east side of the point, while the western front gets battered mercilessly with weather rolling in from the Antarctic.
We continued our drive, checked the weather on line in Gore, and made plans to fish a lake for rainbows, then a couple of rivers in the Te Anau area. Our day on the lake was fun, but we missed the explosive rainbow trout that our friend Mitch had experienced. See his photos at his blog: http://mitchelllayden.blogspot.com/2011/01/flying-trout.html Check out his photos of rainbows leaping out of the water after damsels. We saw a few of these but nothing consistent as the day was cold (+13C with a stiff southerly) and cloudy. We caught quite a few rainbows with a few sighted. The hilight of the day was a random discovery by Amelia. We were walking along a rocky shoreline when she started to spot skinks! Like you, when we first heard the term, we thought what on earth... well, skinks are little lizards that run around on the rocks of warmer exposed locations. Pretty simple. There were lots of them and neat to look at. It was a good day for sure! Oh and our friend Phil will be proud... we caught a rainbow on a chironomid. After that day, considering how cold it was meant to be in the area and how windy and cloudy, we opted to cut the river fishing. On our way out the local rivers had cars parked at every opportunity. Not our style! AJ commented that she wanted a beech forest river, a nice rising brown in clear water. And that`s where we went. But you`ll have to wait for that tale in the next posts...