Little blue penguins and prep for extreme

Monday, December 1st

Sleep was essential today. I didn't roll out of bed until 11am, and the rest of the crew at 12pm. By the time we got lunch, it was almost 1pm. We went down to High street for lunch. It's a cute quaint block with lots of cafes. We found a food hall, aka food court, that had mainly Asian cuisines. I got dim sum - sticky rice and shumai. Not as good as dim sum go go, but satisfying enough.

Steph and Bernice had to visit their mom's friend, Alfio and Nilesh were going to roam around, and I wanted to go to the Antarctic center to see little blue penguins.

I took the shuttle at 3pm to go see my penguins. By the time I got there it was 3:25pm, too late for the penguin encounter. I wanted to hold a penguin. I only had 2 hours to go through the whole Antarctic center. First stop was penguin feeding time at 3:30pm.

They were so cute. Little blue penguins are the smallest penguins in the world and are literally blue. It works well for camouflaging when it swims. Most penguins at the Antarctic center were there because they have physical disabilities leaving them defenseless in the wild. Their average life expectancy is 6 years in the wild with only 2% surviving till the age of 20. In captivity, most can live up to 25 years old.

Between June and August each year penguins start looking for their mates by singing the "penguin love call." They have only one mate at a time. It does not necessarily retain the partner for life and about 18% change partner in a year. One pair in ten would remain together for more than 5 years.

Breeding season starts in August and September. They can start reproducing at the age of 2 or 3. Pregnancy is usually 20 days and they usually have 2 eggs a year, but only 1 usually survives. Chicks are born blind and almost naked. The parent will have to guard them for the first 3 weeks. Only about 60% of chicks make it through the first year of life.

When they get tired swimming in the water, they will sleep for about 4-8mins. Seems like a zombie like me.

Running through the center felt like deja vu for me. Like I did this some time before. Or it was meant for me to be there.

Other fun facts:

Antarctica is the 5th largest continent in the world. South America is the closest neighbor. It's 60 times the size of New Zealand. It is also the windiest place on earth, with an average of 37km an hour and gusts can get over 150km per hour, and the driest continent in the world. Only a few animals live there: 4 species of penguins live there; seals; whales; and some others.

The difference between north pole and south pole is that the north pole is frozen water surrounded by land and south pole is frozen land surrounded by water.

I also went to the arctic storm room where the temperature dropped from -8c (17.6f) to -18.5c (0.4f). Pretty cold, but it's really only like Chicago. After all that, it was time for me to head back to town. The shuttle got me back at 6pm. I was starving by then so I went back to the food hall for some snacks - fried fish and two calamari rings for NZD6 ($3). I have to say I'm loving the nzd to usd exchange rate.

At around 6:30pm, we all reconvened at starbucks to discuss the trip. I also got to try a tim tam slam properly. I had to "borrow" Nilesh's giant cup of coffee though. It was really good. As the coffee passed through the tim tam, it melted and oozed with goodness. Yummmm!

We went back to Base backpackers to ask the travel desk for advice on our activities and time schedule. We sat there for an hour or two figuring it out. I booked a glacier hike, Milford sound cruise, swimming with the seals, sky diving, and canyonning. Only Nilesh and I are doing canyonning, which is an extreme river sport where we jump, slide, scramble, and abseil. The rest are doing bungy and canyon swing. I figured I did bungy and swing already in Zambia, canyonning should be different.

Kirsty, the kiwi girl I met in Thailand, met us at Base. She looked really good. I was glad to see her again. She walked us to Bondi tree, a restaurant we read about in lonely planet. But with our luck, it was closed on Monday. The open Thai restaurant next door it was. I had red curry and it was nice and spicy. Really nice. It's been a while since I had curry. During dinner Kirsty gave us lots of tips about New Zealand. She also told us her experience in India. She had a great time until the bombing occurred. She was lucky that her friend decided to not stay at the Taj Mahal at the last minute. Someone was watching over her. Our conversation was so enticing that we were there until the restaurant closed down.

Saints and sinners it was for a few drinks before calling it a night. I skipped the beer and went straight for the jack and diet. We used our free drink coupons from Base for our first round. I'm still in disbelief we only got drink tickets for purchasing nzd 1,000 ($600)each worth of activities. Oh wells.