Katiki Reserve

As it was too early to go and look for some penguins and if coarse it was also high tide so the Moeraki Boulders are also not so good to see, I decided to check in early at the campground and take it easy until the later afternoon/ evening.

The owner of the campground was really helpful and gave me a lot of information about the best time to visit the penguins and the Moeraki Boulders.
As he looked up the high and low tide times for me, I said that I was thinking to go to the Moeraki Boulders at sunset, and he only said, no not at sunset! You need to go there for the sunrise, that's the best light you can get.
Ok, I don't like to get up so early, but we will see what I am going to do.
I was also surprised to hear that you can see the penguins already around 4 pm! I thought they are always going onshore in the late evening closed to sunset.

After a while thinking backward and forward my plan was, to visit Katiki and the penguins in the afternoon and on the way back pass by the Moeraki Boulders. At least it will be low tide then.

The first animal I saw when I came to the Katiki Reserve was actually a Yellow-eyed Penguin 😍
How lucky I am! He was standing down close to the beach on the grass and was enjoying the sun 😊
After a while watching this little fella I took a walk around the area. I saw a lot of fur seals everywhere, some were really close!
It's a lot of birds around here as well, so there is much to see and the weather was so beautiful now, just a bit too windy, again 🙈
When I came back to the first beach, the penguin was gone. But therefor there was another one up on the cliff and much closer to the track 🥰 Posing around like a rockstar and absolutely didn't care about all the people taking pictures.
So amazing and so nice, that I got to see two penguins in such a short time!
The yellow-eyed penguins are really rare and endangered.
On the way back I met a woman how told me, that she was here already once, 10 years ago and there all the hill was covered with trees and bushes, what is now fields for cows, and there are used to be so many penguins all the way up the hill. So that was actually a little but sad to here, because that what we humans did to the penguins.. Destroy their habitat and now they are endangered, because of us 😕Read more