Otago Peninsula

My first excursion with my "new" car was out to "The Peninsula" (as locals would say). As I've mentioned before, the harbor is an old volcano. It only takes 15-20 minutes to drive to where I took the first view - looking back at Dunedin at the head of the harbor - although the view is usually obscured by cloud.

View SSW up the harbor towards Dunedin

View across the harbor towards the NW

View up the harbor towards the ocean - small settlements near the harbor road

Okay, I know you want to see some of these. 

 Then, I stopped and went for a walk at Sandfly Bay. There is good Penguin viewing there in the evening, but this was mid-afternoon, and I was planning on getting some work done in the evening. These were the signs at the start of the track. Rodents of various kinds (Possums) destroy  penguins, so they are poisoning them. They do a good job with signage - enough to make one take it seriously.

View of Sandfly Bay

After going for a walk at Sandfly Bay I continued around
to Hoopers inlet (I think that is the 'inlet' in the distance)

Then, the weather suddenly (in 20 mins) turned cold and nasty. Within 20 minutes there were strong (almost gale force) winds and hail showers. That had been in the forecast ... but it was hard to believe that it would change that quickly.

Storm rolling in from the southern ocean

Then the storm rolls past after 30 minutes

I've been working on finding the history of sampling within rock units called the "Greenland Group" and the "Golden Bay Group" all day. I now have a huge stack of ~20 papers to read, and I also need to figure out how to set up my GPS for use in New Zealand; I want to learn how to import the data for use in google earth - that will probably take me quite a while to figure out. I won't be doing the sampling for a while, but I want to get all the preparatory work done now, while I am still in Dunedin and familiar with the resources at hand. I also spent far too much time looking up work that has been done on tors in the "schist" in Central Otago.