Thursday - scarce penguins

Today was another overcast day, somewhat enlivened by one of the camping set ups we could see from our van.

The tent is a fold out arrangement on the roof rack of a standard car! From this side it looks bizarre, from the other side it looks unbalanced, sticking out from the car by a complete car's width, with a ladder going up to the sleeping 'platform'.

 

First stop of the day (after sorting out the van's water needs) was the Tasman Lake road, leading to Tasman lake. This lake only started forming in 1970 when a series of sink holes appeared below the Tasman Glacier. It is now a huge lake, with floating ice bergs calving off of the glacier. On the way up the steep path over the terminal moraine there is a small lake called 'The Blue Lake'. Since the formation of the large lake, this small lake is now green as it is no longer fed from glacial waters.

 

The view over the lake to the glacier, and the mountains beyond, was spectacular. It is now several kilometres in length, and growing all the time.

If you look really hard at this photo you might be able to spot one of the tourist boats on the lake. It's near the other side of the lake, behind the foremost ice berg. I think it holds about 20 people!

After leaving the Aoraki/Mount Cook national park we drove south, visiting the Benmore dam and hydro-electric power station on the way. Very impressive. It took many years to build, and the stories of life in the town set up to house the construction workers were fascinating.

Next stop was Oamaru, a most peculiar little town. Lots of nice white limestone buldings dating from the Victorian era, but a very quirky sense of humour. The old harbour area is being restored, but very piecemeal, and still houses a huge foundry in it's centre, and a working warehouse for wool exports. A strange museum/exhibition is the Steampunk HQ, where all sorts of old industrial machines have been put together to form art/science fiction object d'art. Mick wasn't sure what to make of this Standard 10 fitted with a flame thrower.

This giant version of a motorbike was also pretty weird!

 

 

 

 

 

After two delicious ice creams, and a tasting session at a local brewery, we drove down the road to an area where it is possible to observe yellow-eyed penguins coming ashore after hunting all day. This seal also turned up!

After a long wait we eventually saw two penguins. We later found out that these very rare penguins have only one breeding pair on the beach this year. Yesterday 11 penguins were seen on the beach in the evening, but just 2 today. Hopefully we might see more later on in the holiday.

We then drove on to our next freedom campsite, a wonderful deserted area right next to the ocean. Too late to take any photos, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how ideallic it is.

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