Today's whilst not exactly a washout has definitely been a whiteout! We understand that you may have had white in the form of snow but we have had white in the form of mist! We set off for the Otago Peninsula soon after 9am having been to our favourite cafe again for essential supplies!

The weather wasn't great then and as we climbed up onto the Peninsula we disappeared into low cloud, which swallowed us up for the rest of our trip. We think the views should have been spectacular but I guess we will have to come again to confirm that! A planned walk to Lovers Leap and the Chasm was quickly abandoned and we drove on up the Peninsula in the hope that the early morning mist would clear. It certainly was a little better down near the coast but there were no views across to the nearby mainland.

We continued on hopefully to the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head as we had a tour booked and thought we could kill some time beforehand having coffee. However when we arrived at just after 10am the centre wasn't open. Although it was drizzling nastily we did a short walk down to a nearby beach and saw some seals but then decided to retrace our steps to the nearest cafe for coffee. This proved to be some distance away in Portobello but it did a good "flat white", which restored our humour if not our faith in the weather!

Fur seals

We then went back to Taiaroa Head - passing through the same roadworks with one lane working for the 3rd time! If the people working the stop signs hadn't kept swapping over we'd have become good friends by then! We did stop briefly to birdwatch and added a good number of seabirds to our holiday list not to mention lots of black swans and an Australasian harrier!

Back at the Royal Albatross Centre we were able to swap our tour for an earlier one. This involved a talk and video and then a walk to a hide to observe the albatrosses sitting on eggs or chicks. These particular albatrosses - and it is the albatrosses that are royal not the centre despite having been visited by royalty - only nest in 2 places and this is the only mainland place in the world. To get close up viewing of them was very special and we will be able to bore you with lots more detail on our return!

Northern royal albatross on chick

We had lunch at the centre and then went outside to see if we could see any albatrosses flying. Despite the mistiness we were rewarded with several flypasts and 2 albatrosses flying together so a somewhat dismal day was salvaged and we were delighted!

An albatross has a much bigger wingspan than me!

We returned to our motel and put the rest of the afternoon to good use by doing our washing! Well you have to do some at some point so it might as well be on a drizzly one!