In the last blog I left you all in suspense...well at least I would like to think so... ;)
Anyways, read below to hear all about it...
Hanni (Italian), Lysanna (Dutch), and myself book a wildlife tour. The tour included seeing the Albatross, Hooker Sea Lions, Fur Seals, and the best of all the yellow-eyed penguins!! We departed from the city center and drove along the Otago coast to the Albotross center. For whatever reason the Albotross have picked a particular hilltop that they call home, in fact this is the only place in the world to have a Albatross colony.Just in case some of you don't know what an Albotross is, it is a giant bird. In fact they have an average wingspan of 3 meters, which is just shy of 10ft (there is picture to show just how large this is in comparisson to my wingspan). They are most commonly found gliding, not flapping their wings, because they actually lack the muscle it takes to propel their bodies. Instead they rely on the wind to take them where they need to go.
Once we arrived we were escorted up the hilltop, through two security gates, and to the viewing center. Even while walking up the pathway to the top we could see the Giant Albatross souring above our heads. They glide around the top of the hill riding the wind up, down, and around. They flew in all different directions and soared past us. They were very quick, so you had to pay close attention. We were lucky because there were also three chicks that had been born recently and they were on the hillside in our view. They really just looked like giant feather balls, but nevertheless they were pretty cool. After the adults put on a good show in the air, they decided to land and let us get a good look at them. Overall, it was pretty cool.
We hopped back in the shuttle bus and continued our way along the Otago coast and along the way stopping by a small lake that had a plethra of different kinds of birds. We even saw a little owl. The best had yet to come though. We weaved our way up the hillside among the thousands of sheep and continued driving until we reached a famer's gate. This particular company actually has an agreement with the farmer for access to their land, so we continued on driving through this sheep farm and finally stopped when the road came to an end. The scenery was incredible. The ocean was ahead of us, the beautiful hills surrounded us, and sheep were everywhere. We walked among the sheep down the hill toward the ocean and down a set of stairs that led us to a viewing area. There were at least a hundred Fur seals sunning themselves on the rocks, others playing in the little pools of water, and the rest being very vocal toward one another. I have seen seals before, but I had never been that close to them and had never seen them play like they were. You will see in the video I took..Pretty neat
. After spending time with the Fur Seals, we trudged back up the stairs and hillside and made our way down a another hillside to the beach. From a distance you could see the giant Hooker Sea Lions on the beach and you could hear the Penguins calling out. Once on the beach we watched the Sea Lions sun bathe and play. They were quite active, which was very amusing for all of us. We were no farther then 10-15ft from them and the size of these animals was crazy. The guide told us that they can actually move pretty fast, 20km/h (about 13mph). As we watch the Sea Lions horse around we also caught a view of 5 Yellow-eyed Penguins come out of the water and waddle their way up the beach to the hillside. We jumped up in the brush to follow the track to the hidden viewing shed and along the way we had two surprises. The first surprise was a Hooker Sea Lion sleeping in the brush, about 5 ft from the trail and the second surprise was a baby penguin! The little fella was about one year old and had not yet gotten his full coloring. He stood there in the tall grass just stairing at us and let us take photos of him. He too was about 5ft from us. Continuing on to the viewing shed we all grabbed a seat and watch the penguins up on the hillside. I think there were about 6 or 7 of them up there. A couple more penguins also made their way out of the water while we sat there. The whole experience was awesome.
The next day in Dunedin the three of us went to the Speights Brewery for a tour and tasting. Speights is New Zealands oldest brewery and still to this day one of the most popular. The tour took us to the original brewery and they showed us some of the old equipment that was used. Our guide was the Great Grandson of one of the men who first started the company and had a lot of knowledge of the company. He told us about the men who made the wooden barrels that the beer was originally transported in and how they were made. Each piece of the barrel was a specifically curved shaped, a certain thickness, and the edges rough sawn because it made a good seal. The insides were coated in bee's wax to seal the wood from the beer, otherwise it would have affected the taste.
The company had a policy, everyone was free to drink beer and however much they wanted during the work day, but you would be fired if you could not do your job. So during the day the workers would make their way to in the house bar and have one on break or with lunch. Now back to the barrels..There were 7 different barrels all varying in sizes and all having different purposes. The most interesting was barrel #1, which was also the smallest. As I said before, as a beer company employee there were certain perks like free beer. Barrel #1 was specifically made for the men who made the barrels. Each pair of workes were given one barrel each day, which was about 5 gallons! They certainly never went thirsty... Years later when the steel kegs came about Speights demolished all of the wooden barrels and switched them with the steel kegs. When they went to demolish Barrel #1 (which were the barrel maker's) they found that the thickness of the wood was not standard like the larger barrels. Well it turns out the guys who were making the barrels figured out if the wood wasn't as thick as the standard they would get more beer! They believe that these guys ended up getting about 7 gallons of beer a day because of this!! Smart men.. The tour ended in the bar on site, where we all got to taste the 7 different kinds of beer Speights makes. The window was short for tasting so we didn't make it to all 7, but were able to get 4 of them. Probably for the best, the glass sizes were't exactly small. ;)
After bidding farewell to Hanni ( I will be seeing her again back in Queenstown) Lysanna and I went on another factory tour, but this time is was a chocolate factory tour! Cadbury chocolates just happens to have a facility here in the great city of Dunedin. One of two in th world that gives tours.As most of you probably know, I have a mega sweet tooth so I couldn't pass up the chance to go an see the chocolate in action..We even got to see one ton of chocolate pour from the ceiling. Just made me want to go swimming!
Plus there were samples being given out along the way. :D
Off to Invercargill for the night and back to Queenstown to see what kind of trouble I can get myself in....
Pictures: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j30c560vtkvxjcu/43qzi6n25X
Cheers,
Jenna
