South Island, New Zealand
I went for a walk to see the Seals. The walk lasted five hours so I was pretty exhausted when I back to my US$10 a night dorm. It was both interesting and scary.
I was on my own walking around the rocky coast. The plan: to stay on the shore side of the seals to give them an avenue of escape so they didn’t feel threatened (they feel threatened, what about me?).
The first group of seals consisted of about eight seals, placidly lying there minding their own business wondering who was this walking through their home. So far so good. As I moved along to the main colony of around 50 seals, I could feel a little trepidation.
Stick to the plan, I told myself.
I was walking along keeping all the seals on my right side, the sea side. Or so I thought. All of a sudden from a bush about a meter to my left came a deep throated R-O-A-R. My heart hit the roof of my mouth as I felt the fear of God rush through my body. My pace quickened as I tried to put daylight between me and the roaring bush.
Heart still pounding, I walked couple of hundred meters along the beach to a point where the rocks came down to a narrow stretch of the beach. A big fat bull seal lay a meter from the path, baking in the sun (you can see how they get so fat). He was the king of the beach and no one was going to dethrone him.
As there was no way to get around him I tried explaining my predicament, a bit of a one sided conversation. Either he didn’t understand my accent or didn’t care. Anyway, he wasn’t moving. I threw a little stone at him, “ANIMAL RIGHTS SUSPENDED IN STATE OF EMERGENCY”. He just looked at me as if to say I wasn’t worth the effort.
So, I threw a bigger rock…he snarled…OK OK OK, you win.
The only possibility I could see was to climb over the cliff. I wasn’t about to relive the fear of God experience and go back the way I came. I reached the top of the cliff (slag heap, one step up two steps down) only to find that there was a sheer drop on the other side. So back down I slid, to find him and his 49 other mates hadn’t moved a muscle. I guess “fighting that flab” wasn’t a priority.
I tried clinging to the bushes growing on the side of the rock face, hoping to squeeze around. An entrance to a small cave appeared. The imagination runs wild when you’re about to soil your pants. Maybe there’s a mother in there with her young. I could see the headlines: “DUMB TOURIST MAULED BY PROTECTIVE MOM”.
The cave appeared to go through to the other side of the cove. I threw in a few stones and shouted to convey that the fearless white hunter, the top of the food chain, had arrived. Nothing appeared to move. Gingerly I went in.
Then, I saw the arse end of a sea L-I-O-N. I checked the best place to run if something (something else) went wrong. I threw in a few more stones and made more big fearless white hunter sounds. It slowly turned around and gave me a sad/disgusted look for having to move and waddled on out.
Now all I had to do was to go through and exit the other side. With no way of knowing what was waiting I proceeded with great caution. Making those great white hunter noises. I came out the other side and as you can see I lived to tell the tale.