Because the weather forecast called for rain throughout the coastal region, I briefly thought about just driving straight across to Dunedin and avoiding the coast. After the solid day of rain that ruined my chances of seeing Fox Glacier (the face of which collapsed on two hikers the week before, killing both), I just didn’t feel like dealing with more rain.
I wanted to drive to the southern coast, but nasty wind and rain meant I probably wouldn’t be able to stand outdoors searching for Hoiho (very rare Yellow-eyed Penguins) at Curio Point, which was the reason I wanted to drive along that route in the first place.
As I left Manapouri, I was greeted by a rainbow. I guess you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.
This is just a pic from the iPhone as the rainbow was fading, but I reckoned even a faded rainbow as a sign of a good day ahead.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to the coast (Te Waewae Bay), the weather was brutal. It was actually pushing my car around on the wet roads.
At Invercargill it was still rainy and windy. I filled up at a petrol station and asked the guy behind the counter about the weather. We looked at the paper and confirmed it would be a wet day.
I gave up. I drove north toward Mataura and Gore to get away from the coast. As I left the town of Gore after a delicious breakfast-style meal, I wondered if it was silly that the town made me think of Al Gore.
Then, on the side of the road, I came across this sign:
What? In New Zealand?
I pulled out a map and noticed the next town over was Clinton. What a weird coincidence. Obviously both towns existed before either were born, and the highway was dedicated to the former President and Vice-President purely on the basis of the coincidence of the two towns being next to each other.
The other thing I noticed was the weather was clearing up. Of course, the weather could clear up for one of two reasons:
First: I had driven sufficiently far enough from the coast to hit better weather.
Second: As the day wore on, the weather was simply improving.
I was so smitten with the idea of seeing Yellow-eyed Penguins in the wild that I took my chances and turned back south toward Curio Bay.
It was nice having a flexible schedule.
The weather became rainy, again, but by that point, I had committed to driving along the coast.
Luckily, the weather cleared up quite a bit by the time I arrived at Curio Bay, so I took the side roads to find the penguin colony. I also took lots of pictures when I got there, but I never saw one penguin. I asked others leaving the bay, but no one else had seen any, either. One guy said he saw some the week before at about 8 PM. It wasn’t even 5 PM and the idea of waiting up to three more hours with only an off chance I would see a penguin seemed a bit foolish.
It wasn’t a wasted trip, though, because it was a beautiful bay and I enjoyed hiking around the rocky coast.
There was another point before Dunedin called Nugget Point (near Kaka Point)
which also claimed a tiny Yellow-eyed Penguin colony. If I drove that far, it would be about 7:30 PM. The penguins apparently come back from their day in the ocean at dusk and it was the best time to see them, so I decided to risk driving to Nugget Point instead of staying at Curio Bay. Either way, I probably wouldn’t see anything until 7:30, and at least if I drove to Nugget Point, I would have made some forward progress and seen a different part of the coast.
I arrived at Nugget Point around 7 PM and met a tiny group of people in a viewing hide. One couple had been there an hour and the guy said they had seen nothing. I was about to give up after I read a sign on the wall behind him that stated, “If they weren’t nesting, the penguins could be out at sea for a week before returning.”
I pointed that out to the guy after we had been watching for about 15 minutes. As we talked about patience and luck, he suddenly blurted out, “There’s one!”
We all looked dubiously where he was pointing. After all, every “spotting” up to that point turned out to be seaweed.
Sure enough, though, a tiny head and flipper appeared and disappeared. Then reappeared. Once the wave washed back toward sea, a little penguin was left on its belly on the sand. It quickly popped upright and waddled to the shore.
Two more eventually followed. All three preened themselves for a long time. After about 20 minutes, they disappeared in the long grasses where we assumed they were nesting.
From what we had heard, only three had been spotted there the day before, so I decided once they were gone that I might as well return to driving rather than wait until dark for the unlikely probability we would see another penguin. So, as the rains returned, everyone else stayed in the hide while I made my way back to the car to see how close I could get to Dunedin.
As I left, feeling extraordinarily lucky to have seen the rare penguins in the wild, I wondered what I might miss by leaving. I realized I might miss another penguin or two, but I had already felt blessed, and with the return of the rain, I decided I was doing the right thing. So, I headed in the exact opposite direction they were looking.
As I crested the hill, I ran across another rainbow. A double rainbow, as a matter of fact. So it turned out my day was bracketed by rainbows. One end of this rainbow nearly touched another picturesque lighthouse.
And how do you see a lighthouse and a rainbow and not snap the pretty picture?
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