We awoke to another beautiful sunny day.  The photo below was taken in the morning from the balcony of our room.

Dunedin is a beautiful city.  We began the day with breakfast at a downtown cafe.  The picture below was taken from our breakfast table.

Next door was a nice jewellery store, where Nadine found some nice locally-made pieces for her collection.  Somehow she suckered me in to buying them for her!

Just down the street was one of the tourist information centres, called i-sites, which are fantastic resources for travellers, located throughout the country.  They will make any arrangements you need with local attractions, and are a fountain of information about the local area.  We stopped in to pick up some maps and to plan our day.

After a quick trip to a local grocery store for some supplies for the coming days, we set out for the Otago Peninsula to visit Larnach Castle and to spot the yellow-eyed penguins arriving home from a day of fishing.

The photo below was taken on the drive along the shoreline of the Otago Peninsula on the way to see Larnach Castle.  It was several miles of a winding narrow road along the shoreline.

Eventually, we turned off the road along the shoreline, and took another winding road, but this one went up the side of a very large hill.  I was far too nervous on the drive up this road to take any photographs!

We eventually arrived at Larnach Castle, and below are some photos of the grounds.

We toured the castle, but no photographs were allowed inside.  Below are some photos of the fabulous view from the turret.

It was now time to head to the end of the Otago Peninsula to view the penguins coming home from fishing.  Below are a few photos of the scenic drive.

We eventually arrived for our tour of the penguins.  Basically, the yellow-eyed penguins are native to this area and can be found along the south-east coast of New Zealand.  The penguins go out to sea each morning, and return every evening, one by one, after a day of eating fish.  Next to this particular beach, a series of blinds have been set up where people can observe the penguins in the wild without scaring them away.

The penguins are endangered, with only about 4,000 remaining.  There are about 50 that live in the area of the beach we visited, down from about 90 ten years ago, due mainly to an increase in sea lion populations and other predators in the area.

Shown below is a beach where the penguins will come running ashore, trying to avoid predators like sea lions (of which we saw two waiting on the rocks next to the beach), to reach their nests in the grasses.

Below is one of the yellow-eyed penguins we saw.

Below is the inside of one of the bunkers sunk into the ground for viewing the wild penguins.  The guy on the right is a fellow Canadian we chatted with for a while.  He actually works at the Snap Lake diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, which you may be familiar with if you’ve watched the television series Ice Road Truckers.

Walking along one of the tunnels between the viewing blinds.

After about 90 minutes watching penguins, it was getting dark and time to return to Dunedin before it gets too dark to safely navigate the road along the shoreline.  It would be about a 45 minute drive back.