Penguins

One of the most popular tourist sights in New Zealand is penguins. “What?” you might say, “Penguins like ice-covered places, not sheep ranches!” But it turns out that penguins also like their summer vacations, and so the beaches here are covered with cute birds who spend their days fishing, squawking, and sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them.

To see the penguins, you can pay a tour guide $40 NZ a head (about $1.28 US before the recession, or $1,024 now) to take you over to the beach by bus or boat. Or, if you have incredible navigational skills, you can head to the beach all by yourself (hint: it's by the water).

So off we went. One handy thing about New Zealand is that it's surrounded by water, so it doesn't actually matter which direction you drive. We chose to go south, on the theory that it was towards Antarctica. We had trouble finding what we were looking for, but we still had a wonderful time passing through picturesque villages with names like Geraldine (motto: “We're not a Flip Wilson joke”), Waikouaiti (motto: “If you can pronounce it, you're welcome to live here”) and Long Beach (motto: “How'd we get here? We thought we were in California!”). Eventually, when we reached Dunedin, we figured out that we should turn left, at which point we promptly careened to the end of the pier and nearly fell into the ocean. It was there all the time! Who would have thought?

It turns out that in Dunedin, “little blue” penguins hang out at the Albatross Centre (New Zealanders can't spell for squat). Yes, that's right: you can't reliably find albatrosses there, but the penguins show up like clockwork—if your clock runs really, really slow. They come ashore at dusk and sleep on the rocks. (Penguins are not the smartest birds in the world. Why don't they use the nice soft sand? Or check into a hotel? New Zealand has some really nice hotels.)

But when we got there, there wasn't a penguin to be found. Instead, everybody spent several hours watching seagulls, who apparently think it's the most fun thing in the world to float around in the water doing nothing. Call them the backyard pool owners of the animal world. Every once in a while they would all take off for no apparent reason, circle, and come right back. It was kind of like watching NASCAR, except without beer. And NASCAR is quieter.

When it got dark, all the other people gave up and went home. Even the seagulls decided this was a stupid idea. But our family was gonna spot those little waddlers, dammit, even if it killed us. (Given the temperature, that was going to happen pretty soon.) Not that we were likely to see them at this point, since it was now as dark as the inside of…no, I'm not going there.

But suddenly, an hour after sunset, a lone penguin popped up on the shore. At least I think it was a penguin. It was so dark that it might have been James Bond in a wet suit; all I'm certain of is that he was wearing a tuxedo and carrying a Walther PPK, a beautiful lady penguin, and a martini with a little umbrella in it. I got a photo:

He was followed (I think) by a bunch of assassin penguins, but I swear he just vanished into thin air:

But our patience had paid off; we had seen real penguins—if “seen” is defined very, very loosely.

When we got home, we went to the Antarctic Centre (I told you Kiwis can't spell) and paid $40 each to watch the staff feed little blue penguins. But I don't think they were real penguins, because not a single one was wearing a bow tie.