Seal Time

 So remember that post a while back when I saw a seal out on my run? Well this basically makes that seem like nothing now.  Massey University treats their internationals pretty good; this was another organized trip that we went on.  The trip was a walk along a hill trail to the ocean and a seal colony called Red Rocks. The weather was perfect for going for a hike: sunshine blue sky, little to no wind (such a rarity for Wellington!) and these great clouds that were just blowing through the sky. It was a gorgeous morning.

This hike was another nearby to Wellington, we took a shuttle up this giant hill with a wind turbine on top. That's where the trail started, and then we walked a trail along the hills above Wellington, around a rock quarry, and then down to the ocean. Typical New Zealand, I love/hate their tramping trails because they are to rugged and narrow, it feels like you're trail blazing...until someone almost hits you on their mountain bike.  Seriously, I don't know how they can make these narrow little paths, with no guard rails just a giant drop off, and allow both bikers and hikers on them. If it was the States I feel like someone would try and lobby to change that. I don't want that to sound like a horrible thing though: I absolutely love the trails here!

There were only about 16 people who came on the trip this time around, another small group, and only about 5 American girls. There were two German guys and then a lot of the Asian students per usual. We all kind of ended up walking with each other at different points in the trek though, so I had some varied cultural exchanges.

The walk to get to the ocean about 2 1/2 hours to begin with, so as soon as we got there we decided to have a lunch break.  I have to say that I really, really love the ocean. I wish it wasn't winter here so I could go swimming in it. I only really got to go once when I first arrived here, and it was cold enough then. It was lovely just to sit on the beach and listen to the waves. The tide was coming in, and the wind had picked up on the coast, so the waves were pretty large at some points. We sat by the beach for about 1/2 hour so I took waaayyy too many pictures of the ocean. I got pretty hypnotized at one point by a guy trying to surf the waves. I thought it was a pretty stupid thing to do at that the spot he was at because there were a bunch of big rocks and no real beach to surf to. We waited a while, but I never saw him catch a wave.

 

Just walking along the beach there were a lot of crazy stuff in the sand. There were really long ropes of kelp that had washed up and were kind of drying on the shore. It was the kind of giant kelp that was about 15ft long, it just kept going on and on and on. Then there were all the small seashells from hermit crabs and the like. They sparkled when the sun hit them. I was keeping an eye out for some cool seaglass when I spotted this creepy looking creature. I asked my marine-biologist friend and she informed me that it was probably a Portuguese Man of War, but probably an itty bitty baby one. I keep finding cool things in New Zealand, love it here!

After that the cool encounters stepped it up about 100 notches. We gathered back together and walked down the beach a ways and BAM! There were the seals!! I'm pretty sure my eyes did that kind of comic book sparkle thing because I went all cute-nerded-out. I just kept saying things like "THERE'S ANOTHER ONE!" and "OH MY GAWD IT'S SO CUTE" and "SQQUUUEEE IT'S A FREAKING ADORABLE SEAL".  Holy buckets, I sincerely don't know how anyone was tolerating me.

Anyway, as the squealing subsided, I just kept seeing more and more seals. They blend in really well with the rocks, so sometimes you'd be taking pictures of one seal and realize that there was another one about 5ft behind it on another rock. You could get really close to them too. At some points I was almost as close as I was to the one in Oriental Bay.  Mostly the seals were just sitting on the rocks not doing much. The first one we saw must've had its batteries changed recently because it was posing for the camera like crazy, maybe he was a Wet Seal model? (haha, pun.) I can definitely tell you that all the seals there were male because this colony has been studied and it's known that only young males come to this colony to winter there. It has something to do with the shelter and food supplies there.

Look really hard and you should be able to see five seals in the picture above.

It didn't feel like we spent enough time at the colony, but maybe that was because I spent most of my time taking pictures of the same seals rather than exploring all the way out to the point. I kind of wish I did, but maybe I'll just have to go back before I leave! The colony's just out past Island bay, and there's bus routes that drop off right around the area. Anyway, I got up pretty close to this guy, he was sitting right below the rock I was standing on, maybe 8ft away? There was another seal just off to the right and another couple behind him. I love their little pointed noses, kind of look like a chocolate lab, right?

Almost every picture I took ended up being a "where's waldo: seal version" because they blended in with the rocks so well. Every time I looked again there seemed to be another 2 or three seals hiding in the rocks. I tried to count, and ended up estimating that there were about 10 seals in this picture. I think we saw about 32 for the whole day (at least I did). At one point I looked and saw a really cute baby seal in the distance climbing up the rocks to one of the bigger seals, maybe it was his big brother?

The highlight of the day though, was definitely the miniature seal fight we got to see. There were two seals that were kind of sharing the same rock and one of them decided that he was king of the rock and didn't want to share. They got into a really big bellowing match and did a lot of posturing. There even looked to be a bit of flipper biting going on at one point. Eventually the seal on the right backed down and slipped off the rock.

Our amazing day of hiking and seal spotting was finally coming to an end, and the only way that could make it more perfect was that as you looked across the water, it was so clear that you could see the snow-capped peaks of the norther tip of South Island mountains in the distance. It was too cool.