To keep myself from being a lazy student I tend to go running 2 or 3 times a week, and usually I run down to Oriental Parade, which is on the bay in Wellington. It's about a 5k round trip, but it can be a really hard run when the wind is going crazy (as it likes to do in Wellington). Anyway, so I went out this morning to do my usual run, and on the way back in I happened to slow down and look out toward this pier by a beach that my run passes, and I see this little shape out on the pier. I stood and tried to figure out what it was from where I was at, but I couldn't quite tell, and it looked like it was moving. Intrigued, I went down to the pier to investigate. What do I find when I get there? Why this:
I'm also super lucky! This is the coolest thing I've encountered in Wellington so far, besides seeing someone I suspect works with Peter Jackson, but that's another story.... Well it's not long enough for a whole blogpost so I'll just summarize: I'm pretty sure I saw John Howe, one of the concept artists who worked on the LOTR films in the supermarket one day. There was someone in line between me and him though, so I didn't get to ask him if it really was him (sigh, sad day!).
Ok back to super cute, adorable animals! So I walked down the pier, which is a cool bit of architecture. As you can see in the pictures (after you get past how adorable the fur seal is...I'm pretty sure it's a fur seal anyway), it's a lot of concrete blocks that are stacked in different ways to kind of conceptually imitate a pier. More of the pier appears (haha) during low tide, which it wasn't at the time. I was able to get up pretty close to the fur seal because of the steps. I ended up only being about 5-8ft away from it. My
estimate is pretty accurate because I'm about 5'2", so I'm a pretty accurate measuring tool. The seal just kind of chilled on the block it was on, cleaning its fur and ignoring me for the most part. It would look up at me occasionally, and then at one point in climbed up onto the block that was between the two of us so it was super close! It then started making weird noises, so I decided it was probably time to leave it alone, but still how cool is that??I saw some seals when I was in the south island (more on that later) but no where near this close! I'm so glad I upgraded my ipod to one with a camera so I could capture this adorableness.
I even snapped a little video of it:
here on youtube!
and finally, you guys can just die from an explosion of cuteness, like I am right now with these last photos:
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