Staying with Friends

Just realised I haven't blogged for two days. Crikey. I think I have withdrawal symptoms!

Now, where were we when I last did this?

Oh yes, sitting in car in rain. Rain stopped (just a little sprinkle) and we went in to visitors centre at Benmore Dam which was very interesting indeed and it had some cool things for kids (ahem, us) to play with! Bit of history about the building of the dam and some interesting electic / hydroelectric facts. All this along with a very nice man who we had a natter with and who was very impressed by our puzzling out of how it all worked!

Tootled along side of Aviemore (ha ha, thought we'd gone wrong somewhere) and down to Oumaru to a penguin reserve but we decided the penguins were the same ones as we had seen in Australia so we weren't going to pay to see them here. Instead used their car park to have lunch in! Then drove from Oumaru down to Dunedin stopping at very intriguing Moeraki Boulders and also at Shag Point to search for yellow eyed penguins instead of little blue penguins but we didn't see any there either (but then yellow eyed penguins are quite rare and very shy!)

Found friends house in Dunedin with no sat nav and no argument - crumbs :-)

Slept in bed in a house which was a very novel concept and very nice.

Went out on Otago Peninsula and to only mainland nesting colony of Albatross and saw a baby one - wow! Then went out to the Penguin Place and saw my yellow-eyed penguins. Really weird because they nest under trees. You do not expect to see penguins under trees! AND, they had a little penguin hospital where they had one of those little rock hopper penguins (the ones with the crests that look like punk rockers) sad he was poorly but very cute!

Very nice Turkish meal for dinner having discovered that where we were going to go was closed for some reason. This was after we walked dog on beach and rescued a juvenile Shag which had two fishing barbs in its feet. Good team effort - 1 person to get dog off bird and then entertain dog, one person to supply jumper to cover bird up for carrying, 2 people to use multitude of phones to try to get signal and contact DOC for more permanent rescue of bird! Met DOC lady at hotel somewhere, barbs removed, bird released. Hurrah!

Currently having domestic day - washing on, emails done, got to play 'Keep Delete' our all new travelling game with our photos next. We are waiting for cycle hire lady to ring us back as we may be attempting the Otago Rail Trail in the next 4 days. This could be interesting. 160km in 4 days. There is a training programme and everything on their website. Martyn says we can do it no problem. I've put the ice in the freezer for when we finish and I need to sit on it! Apparently the biggest hill is a 1:50 you can buy cycle shorts and gel seat covers. Martyn is currently refusing these offers. Claire and Ian please stop laughing.............

Anyway, there is very little phone signal on this bike ride so there may be no blogs for a few days. After that I may well be blogging whilst standing up :-)