Rainer and Lindsey: On the road again...

We drove down the west coast. We visited the pancake rocks in Punakaiki, had lunch in Greymouth, and walked through Hoikitika. The waves were huge along the coast. Biggest we’d ever seen. We spent the night in Franz Joseph town at the foot of the glacier by the same name.

In one day Rainer and I visited a glacier, hiked through hills thick with rainforest-like greenery, and hung out on the beach with seals. It was crazy. We walked up to the Franz Joseph glacier then ate lunch around Lake Matheson, in view of Mount Cook and the Fox Glacier on Mount Tasman. It was a gorgeous day so we drove down to Gillespie’s beach for Rainer to fulfill his dream of being on the beach in view of snow-capped peaks.

Then Rainer decided we needed to take one of the hikes from that beach. We took the longest hike, about 4 hours, to a seal colony on the beach side of a huge bluff. We walked on the beach, through the forest and one time I was knee deep in mud! We finally got to the beach and slowly walked up on a seal behind a rock. They startle easy so we had to be very quiet. After watching it for 10 minutes and spying others swimming in the surf, we moved closer. The seal saw us, turned, widened its eyes, showed its teeth, lunged towards us and hissed… I was so scared! Finally it ‘ran’ into the sea and swam away. So, how do you fight a seal??