20170122: Port Chalmers, Dunedin

 Sunday, January 22, 2017 Port Chalmers, Dunedin

When we woke and looked out our stateroom window, we were surprised at how close we were to land. There was a spit of sand with marker posts sticking out of it no more than 100' from our railing. The shipping channel leading to Dunedin is very narrow and it is dredged every several weeks. It was a very tight fit into the dock, which was primarily a timber yard filled with piles of logs. They had dropped a few shipping containers in a row to create a border to separate the cruise ship area from the logs. The weather was terrible with the wind blowing cold rain sideways. The temperature was in the low 50's, but it felt a lot colder.

It's usually bad news when the Captain makes an announcement that goes through into the Staterooms. That's how news of the helicopter medical evacuation arrived. This morning, he announced that a dangerous storm was aimed right for our next scheduled port of call, Akaroa. That meant that we would not be able to go ashore in tenders, and running through the storm would be uncomfortable, if not dangerous. So he scrubbed that off our itinerary. Instead, we will remain tied up in Port Chalmers to ride out the worse of the storm, and then we will cruise directly from Port Chalmers to Wellington, making tomorrow another at-sea day.

We had booked a shore excursion in Akaroa to go to Christchurch and the Antarctica Research station there. Fortunately, we booked it directly with Princess, so we will get a full automatic refund. We were disappointed because the Antarctica Research station has exhibits featuring the Kea Parrot, which our port guide lecturer characterized as "naughty birds" who love to get into backpacks and are endlessly curious about humans, several penguin species and a good Kiwi exhibit where we had expected would be our best bet at seeing a Kiwi bird.

Our excursion for Dunedin was booked with Viator. If our ship had failed to dock, it would have been much more of a hassle to get a refund, although Viator says it does have a refund policy for such events.

After having breakfast, we had to wait a long time for the gangplanks to be secured in place before being able to exit the ship. Our tour was booked for 8:45am, and we were just going down the gangplank at that time. Cold rain was coming down in sheets, and the wharf was covered in standing and streaming water. We had to zig-zag about 1200ft to shelter, a warehouse that had been repurposed to serve as a cruise ship terminal by providing toilets, cover, and wifi. 

Our tour operator was waiting for us in the terminal, so there was no problem with connecting with him. Jack and Sharon had booked the same tour. We were in an 18 seater minibus that was similar the minibus that took us on the Great Ocean Road tour. This one had a little better leg room in the back. However, because everyone was drenched from the rain, the windows of the bus fogged up so badly with condensation that it was impossible to see out the windows for the most part.

The driver took us on a scenic tour of Dunedin, but between the fogged up bus windows, and a dense sea fog, there wasn't much that could be seen. Dunedin does host the world's steepest residential street (Baldwin Street), according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It was kind of like if you took Lombard Street, and straightened it out. It was certainly steep. However, it was annoying that presumed tourists would rev up their rental car engines and then fly up, and the back down like mad dogs. It would be really annoying to live there and have to put up with that. Traffic was quite light so only two vehicles did this during the 5 minutes that we were there.

We toured the college, which was closed down because it was summer break for them. There is a river that runs down the center of campus. The rains had turned it into a muddy torrent with trees, tires and other debris rushing downstream.

The next stop was the train station at Dunedin, which is supposedly the most photographed building in New Zealand. 

However, the rains continued and we pretty much just dashed into the building. There was a heavy mist with the rain that obscured anything more than 50' in front of you. 

We did get some pictures of the train platform, but our  iPhones did not have water proof cases, so at least Ben was concerned about using them in the torrential rains.

We left Dunedin to drive around the bay to two wildlife sanctuaries, and we could see some incredible surf and beaches as we drove by. We got out of the bus at one overlook, but the rain and wind drove most of us right back into the bus after snapping a hasty picture. We drove by some mudflats and saw a spoonbill heron, which was a cool sight.

There were also a number of native New Zealand birds that were pointed out along the road. Apparently, the lack of any predatory mammals in New Zealand prior to humans arriving led to the evolution of many flightless birds. One bird that he pointed out has a very close cousin in Australia that flys like any other normal bird, but its New Zealand cousin can barely fly, like a turkey.

The area around Dunedin is very much like the Scottish highlands, with steep hills, lush valleys and tons of sheep. It's no wonder the Scots that settled Dunedin chose this part of New Zealand.

New Zealand is home to many species of penguins including the smallest breed- the little blue penguin, and also one of the most endangered species- the yellow-eyed penguin. There are fewer than 200 known individuals left in existence. 

The yellow-eyed penguin is a fairly large penguin, measuring just above knee height. Penguins spend all day at sea hunting and filling their bellies with fish. After nightfall, they swim ashore in waves, and waddle their way up to their nesting sites, some of which may be nearly a kilometer from the water. Unfortunately, to see these penguin marches, you have to be at a beach near a penguin breeding colony after dark. Since our cruise ship generally leaves port by 5pm, there is little chance of us seeing a penguin march from the beach. This also means you are very unlikely to see an adult penguin on land during daylight, unless it is in captivity. 

The place we visited is called the Penguin Place, and it is one of two sanctuaries that cares for yellow-eyed penguins. They have a tiny visitor center where you can buy post cards with good photos of adult yellow eye penguins. They are so-called because adults have a band of yellow feathers running around the eyes and back of the head. There is s small theater where guides give a lecture on the struggles of the yellow eye penguin. This particular colony was in near collapse. It had 18 breeding pairs several years ago, but it is now down to only 5 breeding pairs. There is a critical shortage of females. Most were thought to have been lost at sea to predators. A female of a breeding pair will pick a new mate if the male dies, but the male of a breeding pair will go on a hunger strike and starve itself to death if its mate fails to return. When this happens, there are sometimes orphaned penguin chicks. Fortunately, because there is a surplus of males, and some of these males act like gay couples, a pair of males can raise a chick. This reserve apparently has a pair of males that have raised a number of orphaned chicks to maturity.

They have a hospital area, where they rehabilitate injured or malnourished penguins. When we were there, they had nearly a dozen penguins in their hospital, including a very rare and also endangered New Zealand crested fiord penguin. Most of the yellow eyed penguins in rehab were juveniles, so they didn't have the characteristic band of yellow feathers around the eyes. Having this little hospital allows them to guaranty that you will see at least one yellow eyed penguin if you visit. When we visited the actual nesting sites, there was only one chick still in its nest. They have a network of covered trenches and blinds that allow visitors to get up close to the nests. 

These penguins have built their nests in tiny A-Frames built by the reserve staff. Their natural habitat would be to build nests in coastal scrub forests because the shade offered by the trees and shrubs were critical to keeping the penguins from overheating, but when settlers arrived, they cut down and burned nearly all of this habitat and made it into sheep land. The Penguin Place staff have been planting thousands of trees to re-establish a coastal scrub forest for these penguins. We did see the penguin chick in it's tiny A-frame laying on his belly. 

The guide was all excited because the chick had just about plucked out all of his downy feathers, leaving just a small ring around his neck, looking like the top of a cute penguin fur coat. We also walked past a nest box containing a nesting little blue penguin, but there wasn't much you could see inside the nest box, which was tunneled into a hillside.

There were also sea lions and fur seals on the beach and on an overlooking grassy knoll. You could really get close to these if you wanted to, but I wouldn't want to get any closer than 20 feet to a sea lion.

Our last stop was at the Royal Albatross Observatory, where the only mainland breeding colony of Royal Albatrosses exists north of the Antarctic circle. The first breeding pair showed up about 1920, and the colony has grown steadily since then. These albatrosses have a wing span of nearly 10'. They spend nearly their entire lives at sea, and are said to be able to sleep while flying. They spend so much time flying that they aren't very good at making landings. When an albatross fledges the nest, it climbs out of the nest and immediately starts flying. From that moment on, that bird may spend months aloft before ever landing on land. That probably is the origins of the stereotype that albatrosses are clumsy. Because these are such large birds, they apparently need help getting launched. The tend to stay in their nests until the wind hits 15-20kts. When we arrived, the wind was calm but rising. As the wind rose, we saw one albatross take flight around the lighthouse on the point. As we left, the wind had risen considerably and as we looked back to the lighthouse, 3 other albatrosses had taken flight.

There was a little blue penguin breeding area and beach very near the Royal Albatross Observatory, with raised viewing platforms. It's too bad it was nearly an hour from the cruise ship terminal. It would have been cool to see a penguin parade, but with the wind, rain, and cold, it might not have been worth the trouble. It would definitely be worth doing if you were spending a few days in Dunedin.

After returning to the ship, we had dinner and attended a new trivia game called "Buzzword". The host would put up a buzzword, followed by 5 questions. The answers to the questions had to include the buzzword. For example, if the buzzword was "WEST", then one of the questions could be "Who wanted Dorothy's ruby slippers?" and the answer would be "The wicked witch of the WEST". There were probably less than 10 teams participating, but in the end, Janet and I walked out winners with a bottle of champagne.

The stage production was "The Australian Beatles", who were a tribute band that did Beatles songs. They did mostly early Beatles songs. While they were entertaining, they were not the best Beatles Tribute band we have heard. George was off key, and they lacked enthusiasm. Still, it kept us entertained for 45 minutes.

We took our champagne to the lounge at the other end of the ship where a new game was going on called "YES or NO Challenge". People volunteered to sit in the hot seat and have a conversation with the host with the rule that if you said "Yes" or "No", nodded or shook your head, or used any colloquial equivalents, you were out. You also could not repeat any phrase more than twice like "Maybe" or "that would be an affirmative". If you made it 30 seconds, you won a bottle of champagne. One of the hosts was very adept at knocking people out in mere seconds. For example, he would ask "So is your name Sam? Is that short for anything? Do you have any nicknames?' Those questions knocked several people out in less than 5 seconds. There was a family of 14 from India, who did very well, presumably because their language idioms aren't necessarily built around yes/no questions. The older ones did the best, while the kids frequently got knocked out because of learned poor English language habits like saying "You Know" after every thing. They counted homophones so "Know" and "No" were both grounds for being out. We enjoyed laughing at the misfortunes of others as we drank our champagne. Poor "4 Second Sam" will have a hard time living down that nickname amongst his friends on the cruise.

We retired after a final late night snack run, while Jack and Sharon went off dancing. I guess we enjoy eating more than dancing. I'll hopefully be able to submit several diary entries via the Port Chalmers Wifi before we leave the dock tomorrow afternoon.