Today we drove from Eastern Bush to Dunedin. We got here at about 1:00, and poked around the city center and the university some. Meg found the psychology department at the university, which was in a cute little house near the center of campus.
After that we drove out on the Otago Peninsula to visit the Royal Albatross Center. The ride out the peninsula is hair-raising; it’s a narrow highway with maybe a meter between you and the ocean at high tide. It’s not a long drop down, but around every corner you wonder if you’re just not going to clear the turn or not. No guardrail, no curb in most places, not even a bike lane. Just a narrow strip of soil, a three meter drop, and then the water.
The Royal Albatross Center was wonderful. We spent nearly an hour watching four nesting albatrosses feed their chicks (one per bird), while another three did lazy turns over the ocean and cliff in front of us. I got a lot of photos, but they’re going to take some work, as I only have the kit telephoto, and so it’s hard to know how much detail you’re going to get. At a minimum, the photos need cropping, which is why I won’t post them now.
The albatross is a big bird — their wingspan is about three meters. In the air, they look big, but it’s hard to realize how big they are; on the ground when one stretches its wings, you get the full import of how big the bird really is. They look for all the world like giant seagulls on steroids; the coloration is very similar to a gull; they’re just huge.
After the Royal Albatross Center, we headed back into Dunedin for our next AirBnB, with Mick and Mary Strack. They’ve been using AirBnB while traveling in Europe, and decided to open up a bedroom in their house now that their daughter is grown. It’s a very nice house; very spacious; the bathroom has both a shower and a whirlpool tub (which we didn’t use). We enjoyed a very pleasant cup of tea and conversation with them downstairs before heading off to get cleaned up for the night.