From Dunedin a finger of land points towards the open sea along each side of Otago Harbour. On the right hand side a good, level road meanders along the water's edge, in and out of hamlets hiding in small bays. Another road takes the high route, sometimes disappearing into low cloud skimming the hill tops.
We took the upper road but ran down, pursued by the smell of burning tyre rubber, to a campsite at Portobello. After booking in we went straight straight to Sandfly Bay in search of penguins and sea lions. It was was 4pm. on Saturday 15 February.
It's a 40 minute walk from the car park at Sandfly Bay, down the tall dunes, across the beach, to the the hide. It was 5pm when we arrived. We almost fell over the first sea lion snoozing on the sand.There were more lolling on the rocks. They are big, bulky creatures and show no fear of people. In fact they are capable of chasing passing walkers, perhaps merely out of curiosity but I wouldn't want to hang around to find out.
As for penguins, after waiting more than an hour in the hide where the wind off the sea chilled me to the bone, we gave up.
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| Snoozing sea lion |
The next day, Sunday, we pottered from bay to bay, beach to beach, watched Albatrosses surfing the wind off Tairoa Head, and returned to Sandfly (sometimes called Sandflying) Bay after 6 o' clock.
We had made detours around a couple of sea lions basking on the beach - ignoring our presence they scratched, yawned, settled more comfortably and flipped sand over themselves - when I glanced ahead. There, right in front of us, walking up the beach, was a yellow-eyed penguin. The penguin stopped, preened for a bit, walked on, stopped again, looked around and, eventually, taking it's time, proceeded at an unhurried waddle up into the dunes and disappeared. We've seen more penguins since then but the thrill of seeing the first one will never be surpassed.
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