Zeehondencreche Pieterburen: getting close to seals ...

On Easter Sunday, after leaving the island, we made our way to the Zeehondencreche (Seals hospital) in Pieterburen, close to Groningen. On the way we were enchanted to discover the open shop of a goat farm, where we tasted and bought different goat cheese sorts-yummy...

After some more km we could say face to face hello to the seals taken care of in the hospital. Most of them are still babys (between 4 and 8 months old) and because of their age their imun system is not strong enough to fight the so called "lungworm"- a virus an adult seal would not get. Due to the increased environmental polution seals get also more often sick in the last years. In 2008 the hospital received 242 patients, which without any help would otherwise die. A team of professional doctors and researchers take care of the weak animals before they are again realeased into the wild.
Another project of the Zeehondencreche Foundation is the collection of fishermen nets from the sea. Till now they have gathered a small mountain of 500 000 t, which are a danger for seals and birds if left in water...

According to the last count there are 3400 seals who relax and live around the sandbanks in the Netherlands! It would be lovely to keep them in the future, but its a big challenge with all the negative effects of the human+industrial activities around....

Whales, seals and Christchurch...

The cute little town Kaikoura on the East coast is the "capital" of whale-watching. This is due to the fact that some 5 miles from the coast the sea depth reaches some 950m and the whales just feel good there:) I still wonder why they calling it whale watching as one can not really see the whale, but just see his fin and/or the fountain of water going out of his nose...Twice we saw Tiaki, a 19-year-old sperm whale. The sperm whale is the fourth biggest whale in the world and males grow up to 13 m. They come up for some 5 minutes on the surface for every 45 minutes they spent underwater...Nowadays the whalewatch boats can track them with funny tools who measure/record their position underwater and like this one can find easily one for "watching":-)

We heart just by accident about swimming with the seals and went there in the afternoon with the operator SealSwim...It was an amazing experience!!!Seals are very curious creatures and they were coming up to 10 sm close to us. We were in the sea about 45 min, which was impressive, when u think that the water temperature was 16 degrees!!!

Posing with the colourful wall paintings in Kaikoura, tired after the busy day:)

Today on the way down to Christchurch we stopped in a lavender farm. The host was very happy to have a chat with us and even more delighted when she heart where we come from. " France and Bulgaria are two big lavender producers", she said, before giving me some lavender oil against the ichy mozzie bites I got (after a count last night:30).

Christhurch seemed (for the couple of hours we got here) very cozy and pleasant city. Tomorrow morning we get the 32-hour-flight (via Singapore) back home....all good things have an end...

Christmas-time+news from Phillip Island:-)

After some days being busy with food-shopping, cooking and present-unwrapping (the Australian style and with Aude, Russell (a real Australian from Melbourne:) and his family), the tourist programme continued with a day at Philipp Island (140km away from Melbourne).

The Island is famous as a place full with Australian wildlife. We visited the Koala Conservation Center, where one can see the koalas in their real environment, sleeping on an eukalyptus tree. The highlight was a koala eating leaves (as all the ones we saw till now were actually asleep)...In the afternoon a boat took us to the Sealion rocks, where a colony of 6000 sealions relax in the sun or play in the water. One could smell them from a km before already...

The day finished with the Pinguin Parade (a colony of 60 000 pinguins lives on the island), which starts every evening after sunset when the pinguin parents come back from a day of fishing to feed their little ones. We saw the smallest pinguin species in the world (around 30cm) waddling from the sea to their babies, who lives in holes/houses within the sand.

If we look tired on the pic abovee, its because it was 11pm already:)

Weather has been really changeable. We had some sun, clouds, showers and again sunshine within less than 12 hours. The sun feels like a big burning machine even at 9am when there is no wind at all. Should be the difference between Europe and Australia and the thickness of the ozon layer here.