We dashed from the car into the restaurant of the South Sea Hotel - which appeared to be the social centre of Oban. The bar was crowded and bedraggled trampers kept arriving, carrying backpacks as big as themselves, looking for shelter from the wild weather. There must have been dormitory accommodation at the rear because each set of walkers trudged wearily past the windows of the restaurant around the back, and appeared minutes later, free of all their gear and with a relieved expression, heading for the bar.
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| Oban from the air and in sunshine. |
The meal, including our first battered oysters, was really good. On our way out we asked the owner why all the staff were young Germans (very polite and impeccable English). He told us he'd put an advert in 'The Backpacker' and only Germans had replied.
We decided that, in the absence of Kiwi-spotting, we would go in search of some Little Blue Penguins, which were reported to come in from the sea to their burrows at dusk around the lighthouse at Ackers Point.
So it was that I came to be standing alone in total darkness on a small viewing platform at the end of a promontory barely wider than the pathway along it, blasted by the wind and rain and high above waves that I could not see that roared onto invisible rocks. Lawson had gone back down the path with the torch to see if there was any sign further back of the penguins climbing up the cliff face. Alone in the blackness I struggled with fears that I was about to be set upon by a gang of mini penguins and that Lawson would forget he'd left me there.
I suspect that the penguins had decided to have an early night in view of the conditions; in any event we didn't see any. What we did see in the last of the light was Sooty Shearwaters flying back to their chicks in burrows around the lighthouse, and heard their eery, soft crooning calls coming from under our feet as we made the return journey, in the rain, wind and dark, along the pathway to where we'd left the car.
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