Parents & penguins

I thought I'd sneak in a quick blog update in between our little jaunts around New Zealand - we've done so much that leaving it all until the end of the holiday would be too much for you to take (or far too much for me to remember!).
Neil's parents arrived on the Monday morning looking incredibally fresh though they probably weren't feeling it after we dragged them around the churches in our parish for the afternoon in a bid to 'help' them stay awake until the evening! They mooched around Christchurch for a few days, finding shops & cafes that we didn't know existed. On the Friday we caught the trans-alpine train across the country to the West Coast. The train crosses some spectacular gorges, through the mountains & then onto rainforest. The rain didn't materialise in Greymouth which we weren't complaining about (though Ken & Sylvia did get almost the annual rainfall on their visit to the West Coast the following week) & we were quite happy to only spend an hour there before the return trip as there's not much to see or do.
Last Wednesday we headed south again, but this time down the east coast. It really was perfect timing because we arrived in Omaru @ about 5pm, just before dusk and in time to see the blue penguins returning for the night. Blue penguins are the smallest in the world & stand at only 30 cm tall. They are very predictable and just after dusk, in groups of between 10 and 20, they 'ride the surf' up onto the rocks and then waddle up to their breeding colony. Penguins mate for life and it's currently the breeding season so the partner's came out of their nests eagerly awaiting the return of their mate & food. Very cute displays followed as they were reunited, flapped their wings at each other other then dived on top of one another making lots of noise! Clearly they couldn't wait to get back inside their breeding hole! We saw about 70 penguins in the space of about half an hour and as we left there was one bird making it's way back down the cliff in search of it's mate who hadn't returned home. It was very touching and we felt sorry for it though we had spotted a penguin making tracks further up the cliff path away from the breeding colony and we wondered whether he/she had taken an escape route - the 'divorce rate' among these penguins is apparantly about 10%!