What’s the collective noun for a group of people stood waiting for hoards of penguins to stroll up the beach at dusk? A gaggle of fools, that’s what.
The Otago Peninsula is known for many things: it’s rugged, rocky coastlines, its winding, narrow streets and most importantly of all, its wildlife. Home to hundreds of nests of blue and yellow-eyed penguins, in addition to fur seals, sea lions and albatross, the Peninsula is about as close as you’ll get to a real life walk-in zoo. On hearing this, I knew I had to go.
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Just a short but scenic bus ride from the city of Dunedin, accommodation options at this end of town are limited, but we opted to stay at a little lodge close to the National Albatross Centre, which overlooks Pilot Beach, home to the aforementioned blue penguins.
Having read that if you take a trip to the beach at dusk every day you will see large groups of the penguins at Otago Peninsula walking up the sand to their nests from the sea shore, we headed down there (unbeknownst to us, far too early) to take our place in prime viewing position.
Immediately we were greeted with a fur seal snoozing just steps from our feet on the rocks. With our spirits lifted, we tried to dispel any thoughts of the impending cold and darkness and strained our eyes for any possible penguin sightings. Nothing happened.
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Otago Penguins – Where Are You?
Someone shouted that they thought they saw a penguin swimming close to the shore through their binoculars, at which point everyone with much more impressive-looking cameras than mine adjusted their lenses and confirmed that yes, indeed, it was in fact a lone yellow-eyed penguin shimmying around and generally showing off near the water’s edge. If he was the pre-show entertainment, then it wasn’t shaping up to be much of a show.
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As the time ticked by and the skies got ever more dark, several stragglers loped back off to their cars and gave up. But the few more hardy of us waited it out. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited. We waited until the sky became so dark that we highly doubted that we would even be able to see the penguins if they did ever make an appearance. In the end, we simply had to give up.
As we solemnly walked back to the main road with no flashlight (dammit, why do we never remember to take that thing with us?), a kind young woman stopped to offer us a lift back to our accommodation. “Shame the penguins were a no-show tonight, eh?” she called to us in the back of her van.
You can say that again, lady. You can say that again.
Read my roundup of travelling around New Zealand here
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