Catlins, Otago Peninsula and Dunedin

After returning from Stewart Island, our next destination was the Catlins - one of our favorite regions in New Zealand. The Catlins is a rainforest area on the South Coast, with beaches, waterfalls, tree ferns, and penguins. We had typical temperate rainforest weather there - wet and cool. However, compared to previous visits (the last one was 12 years ago), the impression of wilderness has somewhat suffered due to almost all roads being now paved. Unfortunately, we were here during the wrong season for penguins - the local Yellow-eyed Penguins are currently molting and therefore rarely or never seen... we only managed to capture one puny specimen (with a distance of 200m). Nevertheless, we enjoyed our time here.

Next, we headed to Dunedin, the fourth largest city in the country with a population of about 130,000. It has a strong Scottish influence and boasts a large university in relation to its population. However, this time the city struck us as rather sleepy and somewhat rundown.

But we didn't intend to stay there for too long - the neighboring Otago Peninsula always captivated us more. It is about 20km long and not very wide, but it features many hills, beaches, and bays. Moreover, there is plenty of wildlife here: an albatross colony (which we used to skip in the past, but now that we’ve become fond of albatrosses in Antarctica, we decided to pay it a visit), a Yellow-eyed Penguin reserve (for those whose NZ visit was a few years ago: it used to be called 'McGrouthers Farm'), and also a colony of Little Blue Penguins. In addition, some beaches are inhabited by sea lions or fur seals - difficult to distinguish not only verbally, but also visually.

We had no luck with free-roaming Yellow-eyed Penguins at the reserve either - currently, they were all away swimming. However, we were surprised and delighted to find that they now have a rehabilitation center there (which we did not remember from before). Here, injured or underweight animals are nursed back to health so that they have a chance in the wild after being released (a sensible measure given that there are only 1,500 specimens worldwide). They currently have 75(!) specimens housed there, and to our great surprise and joy, they also have 2 Fiordland Crested Penguins. We failed to find them on the West Coast, so at least we finally got to see 2 up close, even though not in the pure wilderness.