We slept good and woke up to a sunny day with clear skies, Drove on the road towards the Royal Albatross Center(again) but this time we went to The Opera (Ortago Peninsula Eco Restoration Alliance) to go on their penguin tour. We are hoping to see the Yellow-eyed Penguin. We did see a couple but they were in the Opera rehabilitation center. This is where sick, injured, or malnourished penguins are feed and taken care of before being released back into the wild. We did see New Zealand fur seals and New Zealand Sea Lions along the beach where we hoped to see Yellow-eyed Penguins.
Today we took a different route back to Queenstown and ended up going thru lots of farmland. We saw lots of sheep and more shiny, clean cows. Tibor passed the random alcohol test on the way home- seemed kinda odd to check at 2:30pm in a Saturday.
New Zealanders drive on the left side of the road. There is a saying for right sided drivers: “If you’re confused on which side of the road to drive on, put your passenger in the ditch”. This sounds good until you realize you’re the passenger that’s going into the ditch! Tibor did fine driving on the left side but it’s not my favorite to be the passenger and be right at the edge of the road- even when there isn’t a cliff alongside.
On the way back to Queenstown, we stopped at a Woolworths store(Woolies) to pick up some licorice. When Tibor went to pay with cash, it wasn’t accepted. Turns out it was Brazilian currency! I had put our Brazilian currency in an envelope marked New Zealand currency. Yikes. It’s even worse because I purchased the cherries at the road side self-service stand using the currency in the envelope marked New Zealand currency. I knew it was foreign currency since it looked odd but it just wasn’t the correct foreign currency.
Here’s my birding experience so far in New Zealand: Case 1: Find a cool multi-colored bird with a red face, black & white head, yellow wing patches, find it in the Merlin Bird Guide and discover it’s an European Goldfinch- an introduced species. Case 2: Find a cool black bird with a bright red beak, find it in the Merlin Bird Guide and discover it’s an European/Common Starling- an introduced species that takes over native species habitat. Case 3: Find a cool big black and white bird, find it in the Merlin Bird Guide and discover it’s an Australian Magpie or White-backed Magpie- an introduced species that preys on native species. Case 4: Find a cool greenish/gray bird with a yellow face that’s feeding on nectar, find it in the Merlin Bird Guide and discover that it doesn’t really have a yellow head but the yellow is pollen stuck to it’s face. But at least this time it’s a New Zealand endemic bird- it’s a female New Zealand Bellbird.
Odds and Ends:
- Tibor found his noise-cancelling earbuds in his bag- he spent an hour or more looking for them at home before we left but they had already been packed
- It’s been raining in the afternoon- when the clouds come in and it starts raining the temperature drops quickly
- One time on the drive today, we had full bars of service but no internet connection
- Interesting words used in New Zealand- slippies (slippers), plunger coffee(French press coffee), hidden queue(stopped traffic near blind curve), Woolies(Woolworths store), pullie(Pullover/sweater)
- We drove about 460 miles these last few days, used 10.4 gallons of gas and averaged 44 mpg with our hybrid rental car