... albatrosses ...
... dolphins ...
... and fur seals:
The fur seals were actually pretty amazing: they can climb steep slopes and get about on the rocks almost as nimbly as land animals can (these two guys are on a ridge about 50 feet above the water):
We also saw a particularly rare type of penguin, the yellow-eyed penguin:
And, of course, there were sheep. Many, many sheep.
We took the wildlife tour because we dreaded being stuck in Dunedin, the port city for the region, which we figured would be even smaller and duller than Christchurch. But it is actually a pretty town set on the hills surrounding a fjord, much like a smaller Wellington and quite a bit more attractive than its bigger South Island sibling.
And it has what has to be New Zealand's finest railroad station, now more than 100 years old:
Alas, this magnificent station is only served by a tourist train these days; New Zealand's public passenger train network is limited to the Auckland-Wellington line and lines running north and west from Christchurch.
The guide informed us that the Hooker sea lions we saw are one of the rarest species of sea lions, and we were lucky to have seen these males. There are less than 10 females left in that area. The yellow eyed penguin is similarly unique to NZ and is the world's rarest. We saw very few, in contrast to the south African ones understandably. They are threatened by predators esp ferrets that were brought to nz
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