6. A Penguin Day Off.

Yesterday I had the first day off since I started work at the farm, so I spent most of the day lounging around trying to top up on energy. When I realised halfway through the afternoon that it was making me more tired, I got up off the sofa and went to Oamaru.

The main reason for the trip to town was to do a serious food shop. The amount of calories I am consuming is probably pretty similar to the athletes in London at the moment. Although my calories are mostly coming from bacon, baked beans and biscuits. Myself and Dan have discovered the greatest biscuit ever, it is called the 'Choco-ade', and is apparently a bit of a legendary kiwi product, it is being advertised as 'The Great Kiwi Comeback'. 

It is better than a Jaffa Cake, and I would just be eating them if I wasn't aware of the importance of a balanced diet, speaking of which I also bought my first kiwis (fruit not humans) since I got here. 

As I traveled to Oamaru, I put the radio on and the CD that was left by the cars previous owner, who happened to be Irish, started playing. To completely support the stereotype, it was Riverdance (1994 version of course). I am not sure whether the very shaky journey was due to the badly worn gravel road, a bent axle or the foot-tapping on the accelerator! 

Oamaru is probably most famous for its colony of blue penguins, so I thought I should go and have a look see. Next to the harbour is the 'experience' which costs $25 to see the penguins. As I am now a local and not a tourist, I went down the road to Bushy Beach, imaginatively named after all the bushes that grow there, where yellow-eyed penguins reside. 

It was very quiet, probably due to the pretty miserable weather, but I did see a few of the flippered fish-eaters, as they came home to their nests in the bushes after a days fishing in the open water. There is a walkway up above the beach with viewing platforms and a hide which provides somewhere to see the penguins without scaring them away. In the hide there was a very pessimistic information board, which pretty much just listed ways in which penguins can die.

Watching the penguins arriving home is really quite entertaining. They kind of boogie board their way onto the beach then once they are on to the sand, waddle comically across the beach to the bushes. There was one little chap who must have forgotten his house keys because halfway across the beach he did an about-turn and scooted himself on his belly back into the water. 

Another penguin was making a real racket, he was hiding in the bushes near the walkway and I half climbed over the fence to get a closer look and a decent picture. I think he was the lookout or something, he didn't stop squawking the whole time I was there.

After Bushy Beach I went down to the harbour to see what was going on. There was a whole lot of birds on the end of a closed pier that I think were blue penguins. It was too dark to get a decent photo though. A gentleman of an oriental persuasion came up to me and asked me if they were blue pigeons. I said probably not, but they could be blue penguins. He looked confused so I ran away to take a cliché picture of the penguin road sign.

Today I went for a drive up the Waitaki Valley to Omarama via the lakes and dams, and a few other interesting things to look at. But I will save all those photos for another blog post in the next few days.

I've just set my alarm to 4:40 am because I am back to work tomorrow. There is a huge amount of calves due over the next few days so I can look forward to being very busy over the weekend. 

Thanks for reading and keep sharing. Also leave a comment, as I only have anonymous views and it'd be good to know who is reading!