Oamaru is very famous for their penguins. I didn't want to disrupt the narrative flow of the last entry, but in reality after dinner we walked down to the coast for some penguin viewing, which is overrated. There a smallish species of penguin, and they're protected so you're not allowed anywhere near them. Basically about 100 people gather at dusk at the ranger's station, where a penguin fanatic named Jim takes you to a cliff far, far above the penguins. There are about 15 penguins in the colony, who dive into the ocean each morning and return here in the evening, so you spend several hours on this distant cliff waiting for the penguins to emerge from the water and waddle over to some place out of view. We only managed to see one penguin make the five second waddle in the 90 minutes we were there, but Jim was certainly excited as he boomed out "enjoy it, live it, experience it" at top volume over and over again.

The photos were taken from the observation point to give you an idea of how close you'll get to the experience, and the penguin is actually in the zoom photo if you want to exercise your "Where's Waldo?" skills. I'm sure post Happy Feet this excursion is even more popular, but I really didn't get it.