February 14, 2026
We spent a relaxing morning after being out very late the night before with the blue penguins tour. It was a lovely weather day with partly cloudy skies.
We had scheduled the late afternoon tour with Clearwater Wildlife Tours which departed from The Octagon. We drove downtown a few hours in advance to walk around and have an early dinner. Heinrich decided he wanted to try the New Zealand version of Mexican food, so we ate at Amigos. It was very good.
After dinner we walked around The Octagon and did some sightseeing.
The Clearwater Wildlife Tours van picked us up promptly at 4:30 pm. It was a small group tour with only 10 people. For the first part of the tour, we drove into the Otago Peninsula and stopped for some nice views.
For the next hour of the tour we drove around two wildlife refuges and saw many different varieties of birds. [Note: the list of birds didn't make the trip to Stewart Island, so captions will be added after our return.]
Next we drove to Cape Saunders. This area of the peninsula is on private land, so the only access is via the tours run by the owners. Our first stop was to view a very active fur seal colony. Many pups were swimming in the water. They were fun to watch.
Our next stop was where the fun really began. Penguin viewing time! We were lucky enough to spot eight yellow-eyed penguins (Hoiho) on the beach and near their nests.
We watched another adult penguin waddle up from the beach. The two juveniles got noisy wanting to be fed. And then the adult waddled over to one of the juveniles and fed it!
After that fun display, we walked down to the beach to view a group of sea lions. Some were resting and others were moving around and got a bit playful.
While we were on the beach we spotted three more Hoiho penguins standing in the bush, but they were too far away for me to get any good pictures.
On the drive back to Dunedin we made a final stop at a volcanic crater and had some nice views before sunset.
