Penguins, Sea Lions, and Fur Seals Oh My!

Dunedin, NZ

Today’s adventure was really amazing.  It’s probably our favorite thing we’ve done so far in New Zealand.  We booked a 6 hour tour with Elm Wildlife Tours.  A tour van picked us up in the city center of Dunedin and we took a beautiful 45 minute drive out to the Otago Peninsula.  We drove through winding streets and saw views of rolling hills on one side of the van and views of the water on the other.  We stopped at the top of one of the hills and were blown away (literally) with all of the wind.  They gave us each a pair of binoculars to use on our trip which came in very handy when viewing the different species of wildlife.  Our first stop was at the Royal Albatross Center.  The royal albatross are the biggest of the albatross (a type of bird) with a 3 meter wingspan.  The royal albatross only come back to feed their young so we didn’t see any, but we did see several smaller albatross flying over the ocean.

We then got back in the van and worked our way around several inlets on the peninsula and ended up at our main stop for the day.  We hiked (and we do mean hiked) up and down several hills to get to our destination (but no complaining here . . . the green rolling hills and stunning views around each turn were absolutely gorgeous).  We soon saw a rocky area where several dozen fur seals were laying and/or playing.  Fur seals have a dense secondary layer of fur – hence the reason they are called fur seals.  We saw a lot of pups playing in the water and relaxing on the rocky shores.

Next, we headed to see the sea lions.  In order to see them we had to walk back up the hill we just hiked down, and then down another hill to the sandy shoreline.  We could clearly see the New Zealand Sea Lions (Hooker Sea Lions) on the shoreline as we began our walk downward.  The NZ Sea Lions are the rarest of the world’s five species of sea lions and are found only in New Zealand.  They are very friendly and didn’t mind us being close by at all.  They can dive over 650 feet deep and the males can weigh up to 850 lbs!  When we saw them, some were laying around sleeping and some were playing with one another in the waves.

The last wildlife that we saw were the yellow-eyed penguins.  They are the rarest of the world’s 18 species of penguins and are found only in New Zealand.  We really enjoyed watching the penguins come to shore.  We had to sit inside of a wooden structure called a penguin hide because the yellow-eyed penguins are a shy bird.  They feed out at sea during the day and return to the same location the late afternoon.  They were so cute when they swam in from the ocean, waddled along the sand, and hopped up the sand banks in order to join their penguin friends.  One even waddled and hopped all the way to the top of the hill.