Waimate, Oamaru, Moeraki

Today was wildlife day! Not sure if it was fully planned that way, but that's how it worked out, and I enjoyed it. SIL was unfortunately under the weather, so the brother and I headed south to Oamaru.  Along the way we swung through Waimate to visit a wallaby park.  They're pretty cool little critters, and you get a little bag of feed to share with them as you go through the various enclosures. They've been hand-raised so they're quite comfortable around humans, and don't mind getting up-close and personal.

Om nom nom nom.

 From there we continued on our way to Oamaru to see the Steampunk museum.  First, though, was something even more important: whiskey tasting.  It was a bit spendy (like everything else here), but when you consider that there hasn't been an active distillery here in over a decade and they're working out of previously barreled/bottled stock, it wasn't bad at all.  I even found one that I liked (and that gets used to make a whiskey ice cream at a local creamery, also quite tasty), and will probably end up having the bro bring back up for me, so I don't have to haul it around on the rest of my trip.  Right across the street from that was a small craft brewery; they don't have nearly the beer scene that the PNW does, but they're starting to develop a taste for good beers.  We did a sample set, with a pilsner, a wheat beer, and my personal favorite, a porter.  We lunched up to sober up, then made our way over to the Steampunk museum.

Groovy.

It was smaller than I expected, and had more of a dark turn than I'm used to in Steampunk, but was still pretty darn interesting.  They do have a decent amount of room to expand into, both in the building and in the yard around it, so hopefully it will continue to improve.  Either way, I'd say it's worth your time to check out.  Sadly I'll be missing the Steampunk festival that they put on... it'll be happening at the beginning of June, while I'll be visiting my friend in Brisbane and winding down my trip.

I wonder what they were bowling for?

After that we headed further down the coast to Moeraki, home to some really crazy boulders and a wildlife preserve for yellow-eyed penguins.  I forgot to read the explanation of how the boulders were formed, but there are a whole series of them that are either perfectly spherical or nearly so.  Some of them have split open in interesting ways as well.  One thing that really surprised me is how little animal life there was along the beach.  We found one place where it looked like a clam had burrowed in, but no crabs, no washed up starfish, none of the things I'm used to running into on a beach.

Just chillin'.

The penguins were pretty cool, especially since it's the first time I've run into them in the wild.  They weren't very large, but there were a decent amount of them, and it was fun to see them waddling around.  There were also quite a few seals hanging around, and I was amazed at how hard it was to spot them if they weren't moving.  Apparently we got there at just the right time of year, because there were a few groups of baby seals running around as well.  The only annoying part was having to watch out for all the rabbit holes... stupid rabbits.



Baby Seals!

Today we're headed off to Queenstown; more from there later.