October Showers Bring November Flowers

The season flip has been a strange one to get used to. It's weird knowing that Halloween is just days away, yet the trees are covered in cherry blossoms instead of fall leaves. The days are getting longer (it's light out after 9pm), the weather is getting warmer (although we've had a couple insane wind/rain storms this month too), and the boys are getting restless for summer break (which starts at the beginning of December)

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A week and a half ago, we went to Sandfly Bay. SO AMAZING! Last week we tried (I might actually drown myself) to surf at St. Kilda. SO AMAZING! Last weekend we went to Victory Beach. SO AMAZING! Which makes me assume that we're surrounded by unreal beaches. The water here is more turquoise than at home, but the water temps feel about the same.

above Sandfly Bay

The hike down to the Sandfly beach is through a farmers field, and every farmer's field is full of sheep, so I was pretty tickled over all of the little lambs. As we walked down towards the beach, the path opened up onto sand dunes, and as we climbed up over them we were greeted by a huge sleeping sea lion on the beach below. I started madly snapping photos of it... little did I realize that the beach was covered with them!

Sandfly Bay

As we ventured down the beach, dodging these great beasts, Scotty spotted a sea lion surfing out in the waves. We stopped to watch him and it became clear that he was looking for a place to come up on the shore. His big body disappeared into the white foam and then emerged onto the sand less than 20 meters from us. I quickly started to film, and suddenly, he quickened his pace and ran straight at a sleepy sea lion on the beach. I felt like a correspondent for National Geographic as these huge sea lions wrestled on the beach right in front of us! 

The beach was littered with these hulking bodies, an they kept flicking sand onto themselves to keep the flies off which made some of them harder to see. There were a few times I got a lot closer than intended because I was too busy looking everywhere else and not where I was going.

We went and sat in the penguin hide and watched some of the sea lions dive into the water from the rocks, but the penguins don't usually come up onto the shore until closer to sunset. Otago is home to the world's rarest penguin: the yellow eyed penguin. In order to see one, you typically have to stay hidden, and being that it is breeding season, it is very important that people give the penguins their space so that they will actually come ashore and feed their chicks.

 Last weekend Brian and Helen took us to Victory Beach. The hike (I should actually say "tramp" because kiwi's don't use the word "hike") to the beach leads past more farm land, and there are these massive natural pyramid structures in the middle of the fields.

The walk to Victory Beach with a pyramid the the background

Could I look any MORE like my mom???  Identical.

We hunted the coast for signs of the penguin, but only found footprints and pathways through the long grass. We walked all the way to the other end of the beach and found seal pups hiding on the rocks. Scotty got in closer to take some pictures and a protective mom started growling at him. Brian burst out laughing at me when a mama seal charged forward on a rock and I immediately turned and wheeled outta there while yelling "CRAAAAP" I had seen how quickly that sea lion could run the week before, and I am not even half as fast as Scotty, so it bodes well for me that I am quick on the draw.

The baby poses for pics while mama spews hate from her eyes

The pups had little meerkat faces. So cute.

I will always remember leaving tiny baby Maya on Nena's doorstep, knocking on the door and then Bri, Helen, Scotty and I hiding behind a tree to see what Nena would do with this little Kiwi Asian baby sleeping all by herself on the doorstep.

 As we turned to walk back down the beach, Scotty started yelling and pointing out in the water. There, bobbing up and down over the waves was a little yellow eyed penguin. Brian and I quickly got low on the sand and waited to see if this little guy would actually come onto the shore. He glided in, stood up, and then turned around and swam back out. He did this a few times before deciding it was safe and proceeded to wander across the beach less than 50 meters from us.

There are only less than 6000 of this species of penguin in the world

This week on "The Nature of Things With Scotty Suzuki"- we look at the Furry Sea Lions, Hooker Seals and the rare Yellow-Eyed Penguin on New Zealand's Otago Peninsula: