Cycle: 71km

I was awoken by what sounded like sheep's talking to me. Sure enough, on opening the tent there were three sheep just next to the tent through a fence! I happily adjusted to the daylight whilst feeding them bits of grass!

The first stretch of the day's cycling was nice and flat and before we knew it 20kms were behind us and we were due for a break. After stopping at the uninspiring 200 year old Mauri rock paintings we arrived in Duntroon and dropped into the Flying Pig. This turned out to be an excellent little cafe with great food and service.

The next section of cycling was a little more off the beaten track passing through several distinctive geological areas. The first and most impressive were the Elephant Rocks. These are limestone shapes carved by wind and rain, filling an entire field and were used as Aslan's home in The Chronicles of Narnia. They were fun to wander around and climb. Near to these was a small fossil of a whale.

The road continued to meander through valleys of limestone cliffs making for an unusual day's cycling. There weren't many cars which made a nice change from being on the tourist highway from Christchurch to Queenstown so we enjoyed cycling side by side chatting in the sunshine.

Oamaru turned out to be a nice small town and we stayed in the Top 10. We didn't really want to spend more than one night here so we booked straight onto a blue penguin trip for that evening. This was a brilliant thing to do! The penguins are only about one foot high and are rubbish at walking on land. They wait in groups then race to their little homes in the cliffs. This is a tactic to avoid predators. We were lucky enough to have a seal sleeping on their slipway which meant that they were nervous about going past it. The seals don't eat the penguins, but the penguins aren't so sure! The first one to brave the slip turned around and leapt back down the slip at the first sign of motion from the seal! Then a group of about twelve made a brave rush past. They kept on stopping and checking if the seal had seen them or not! In all we saw about 22 penguins come in from the water and the whole experience was much better than I had expected.