I woke up first again, per usual. I think sometime around 7 ish. I realized that we’d parked on a pull out right next to the Ocean. We knew we were next to the Ocean, but we thought we were higher up, but nope: We were on a pull out that prior regularly park on to look at the view and go down to the water 🙃
I decided to go down to the beach and walk to a rock down in the distance where i could sit near the water and be out of the sun; so i walked down a couple hundred meters maybe and parked my butt on a rock.
I don’t remember what i did from there. Just thinking maybe? I was up for like three hours before Chase got up.
One thing I did, though… was see dolphins!!! That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever seen them, but I saw two swimming quickly toward shore a ways down the coast from me. I only recognized them, let alone saw them because they kept leaping out of the water.
It was so cool!
It wasn’t but maybe 30 seconds or a minute later that i saw maybe 5 more? 😁
Then the other two started swimming back to the rest of the group… maybe herding fish toward the group for eating?
After a few minutes, they continued down the coast and disappeared into the distance, but not before i was smiling from ear to ear.
Dolphins!!!
After Chase got up, we drove toward Cape Palliser Light House looking for the seal breeding colony that was supposedly there.
It… wasn’t hard to find. 🙃
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were thousands of them. 🙃
They look so cute with their massive eyes just lying there sleeping. Some would wake up, stare at you, and ignore you. I was able to get super close without then caring.
I didn’t want to get bite close, so I was careful to make noise, so they knew I was there, and i wouldn’t startle them.
It was so cool.
We wandered up the coast to where tons of little babies were. That was super cool, too. Their little bodies and huge eyes.
So cute. Melt your heart. 🥰
I… uh… feel for the males, though. 🙃 They have all the normal male parts down there, but… No way to protect them from getting slammed against every. single. surface. every. time. they. move.
😬
No wonder some of them are cranky. I would be, too.
Ouch! 🙃
Another interesting observation, the mama seals don’t stay to fight you if you get near their babies: They… run away and leave them. 😶
I am glad to see that, in general, the seals aren’t super afraid of us. It wasn’t that many years ago in the history of humankind that we were brutal, killing seals everywhere.
There were two little babies by themselves under a rock, and one of them was face first in the water. I could hear it gurgling water up it’s nose, and it was squirming, so i… hesitated for a bit, and finally grabbed the little thing by it’s rear flipper feet thingies, and pulled it out–face completely covered in water.
Hope that was ok to do.
Man there were seals everywhere. Big ones. Babies. Sick ones (saw one or two with eye infections). Injured ones (bloody gashes on faces and necks from fighting with other seals, by the looks of it).
I thought maybe we’d see some killer whales with all the seals around, but nope. No such luck. Though i don’t really know how I’d feel watching them hunt.
Don’t like seeing things die.
After that, we went over to the lighthouse and climbed up it’s 253 steps that reach to the base of the lighthouse. Then we talked to a family that was from canada, china, and new zealand, all in one. We talked to them for quite a while, before heading to Wellington.
I wanted to go to the place where they filmed aragorn and company recruiting the dead people in Lord of the rings, as it was only a little ways out of our way, but it turned out to be like an hour and a half hike, and I had to choose between that and snorkeling possibilities.
I opted for the snorkeling option, and Chase wanted some time alone with a lot of things on his mind, but the snorkeling turned out to be a bust, so I just hung out on the rocks in the ocean giving some space to Chase.
We talked when I got back, help the guy from the Czech Republic with his car, ate some dinner, watch the end of The return of the King which had been like two and a half weeks since we’d last watched it, watched some of the Expanse, and then just hung out while Chase napped until it was time to go to the ferry.
We got to the ferry about 12:30, a little ahead of the 1:00 a.m. deadline, got the car loaded on to the ferry and us into the cafeteria area, where we bed down for the 3ish hour ride over to the South island.
And that was… that. 😊
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 