Rafts of Penguins

Last night’s B&B was very nice—a step up from a hostel—but don’t you think it would be fitting to have more than one bathroom for a houseful of people?

Thanks to a gentle prompt from Jill, before we left Dunedin we walked up another superlative, Baldwin Street, the world’s steepest street, or is that the world’s steepest straight street, or the world’s steepest street in the South Island of eastern New Zealand? It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records, anyway. At its most daunting it’s got a 35% grade.

As we trudged slowly upward, a man in his sixties ran gasping up the hill, turned and ran backwards up the hill, turned and ran forwards past us to the top, took a slug of water, did an about-face and skipped to the bottom of the street, and then turned around and headed back up. I don’t know if he’s still alive. There’s an annual race called the Baldwin Street Gutbuster. Maybe he was practicing for that. The record for the fastest time up and down the 162-meter road is a stunning one minute and fifty-six seconds, not beaten since it was set in 1994. Here’s a picture of a recent race, stolen from the UK’s Daily Mail.

Today’s goal: Oamaru, a town of about 15,000 to 30,000 (depending on your sources) that’s home to two kinds of penguin—the blue and the yellow-eyed—and to late-nineteenth-century buildings made out of a local white limestone called … whitestone.

Our first stop enroute was Shag Point, where Syd spotted two fur seals lolling about on the rocks offshore. The Maori name for this place is Matakaea, meaning wandering gaze, and that’s what mine did.

Next stop: Moeraki Boulders (which auto-corrected first to “More Ski Boulders,” and then to “Moderation Boulders.”) It’s hardly wilderness.

The place was crawling with tourists. Some apparently see fit to carve their names in these beautiful, massive boulders, as you can see in this self-portrait.

I could say that no one understands how these nearly perfectly round boulders came into existence, but I’m with Syd. She knows, and this time, so did the interpretive sign.

The Moeraki Boulders are spherical rocks that reach one meter across. They started to form about 55 million years ago, when mud, pebbles and shells were deposited on a quiet sea floor and gradually buried. In places, lime was deposited slowly and evenly around a shell or pebble, to form a hard, cemented, spherical concretion [hard, solid mass formed by the local accumulation of matter]. While still buried, some concretions split and became infilled by walls of yellow crystals of lime. As the region was uplifted in recent geological times, the sea eroded nearby cliffs of mudstone, to free the boulders from their encasing softer rock.

Maori mythology also has an explanation of their genesis. It tells of a crashed waka atua (canoe of the gods), with the various rocks offshore being pieces of the wreckage. The round boulders are gourds and calabashes bound with flax. The smallest of the spheres are kumara (sweet potatoes).

Syd has a very weird habit: leaping. When she gets to a scenic outlook she particularly likes, she insists that I photograph her mid-air in front of it. I have taken airborne shots of her at the top of the Duke’s Nose, on several picnic tables with scenic backdrops, and today on the beach. I don’t understand it, but who am I to judge? Well, I am Ginna, and I deem it strange. Syd: what’s the oddest thing that I do? I’m a bit afraid to ask, but it’s only fair.

We played around in town for a while. Sure enough, the buildings are white, and beautiful, in a fierce, imposing sort of way, like my grandfather.

We had an early dinner at the Star and Garter Tearoom, which has been in operation since the late 1930s. On the walls are over 100 wedding pictures of people who have had their receptions there over the years. Here’s one particularly striking couple.

There’s a big Steampunk museum here. What is “Steampunk?” you might ask. I have no idea. It’s some kind of made-up world that’s sort of a Gothy subculture. I asked two people to explain it. “A clash between Victorian and alien,” said one young woman. The wacked old man at the museum said it’s “100 years ago meets 100 years from now… history combined with science fiction.” I still don’t understand, but at the museum there was a giant steam engine with futuristic guns sticking out the side, and a turn-of-the-century chaise covered with skull fabric. If you’re into Steampunk, Oamaru is the place to be.

We also passed a little community radio station, so I stopped in and chatted to the elderly couple that was finishing up a classical music show, and a slightly younger woman about to start her country-western two-hour stint. I asked if they had a program guide or other listing of broadcasts, but they didn’t even know what that was.

After getting our fill of town we went to Bushy Beach Scenic Reserve in hopes of seeing a yellow-eyed penguin (hoiho). They are not readily sighted, being shy, and few in number. They go fishing out in the ocean during the day—as far as 40 kilometers offshore, and they can dive up to 120 meters—and often (but not always) return at day’s end. We walked out a closed trail to an overlook of the beach, and scanned the sand and water below for activity.

After about half an hour, I saw a duck swimming back and forth in the breakers. It rode the waves close to the beach, washed back out again, floated in and suddenly scrambled out of the water and onto the sand. On dry land, it stood upright. What? Ducks don’t stand upright. It was a penguin! With its white vest and white-striped yellow eyes, it waddled with flippers angled forward, quickly disappearing around a bend and into the bush. A while later there was another, and one more. It was thrilling. We were very lucky to see them, and Syd was lucky to get proof that we saw them:

Then we drove to a different point of land where we had to pay $20 for the privilege of viewing blue penguins. Unlike our yellow-eyed guys, this colony is under close scientific observation and living in human-constructed dens. Still, there was no guarantee that we’d see them. After the big storm a couple weeks ago, they vanished into the sea for a number of days.

We had time to kill till dusk, when the action usually begins, so I wandered out by the water and listened to the waves. I had the odd sensation I was being watched. I looked along the rocks at the waterline, and lo and behold, there was a soulful-eyed seal blinking at me.

We sat down on concrete bleachers above the rocky shoreline, waiting for the tiny blue penguins. They’re the smallest penguins in the world, weighing only one kilo and standing only about a foot tall. They really are blue if you see them in daylight when they’re dry. They mate for life, unlike me. The audience was under strict orders to stay seated, to be quiet and not to take any photos. But the minute a raft of penguins began to make its way to shore, flashing silver like leaping trout before crashing into the rocks on a wave, all these dickbumps stood up, blocking others’ view. No matter how many times they were told and signaled to sit, they ruined the vista. I really don’t like people. I left a little early because it was making me cranky to stay. A nice young woman who knew why I left came after me a few minutes later. “You can go back now. Most of the people have gone.” As I walked I heard the trills and screeches and clucks of the wee penguins going to bed for the night.

We got back to our nice hostel (Old Bones) well after dark, just as a flame-orange supermoon rose above the Pacific Ocean horizon. [Thanks, Jill and Mom, for your lunar help. I am a wee bit less befuddled now.]