Location: New Haven, Otago, New Zealand

To my regular readers (hah!), it might soon appear that we travel here and there seeking sea lions around every corner. I’m more of a chicken person myself. But we just keep bumping into sea lions. So, surprise, we’ve found some more – and these ones are special.

The New Zealand sea lion is among the rarest in the world. Many say, the rarest. And there they were, lolling around outside our accommodation at Surat Bay Lodge.

On our first morning, I almost walked into one on the beach as it was camouflaged in the shadows against a stand of large rocks. The sea lion started to move quickly into the bushy sand dunes, precisely where a fellow traveller, Alison, had set off walking.

Alison’s companion had decided to walk the beach with me, and we both called out anxiously, ‘Alison, there’s a sea lion coming. Where are you?’ And she called back from the dunes, ‘I’m here’… sounding pretty much exactly where the animal was galloping at a surprising pace.

The thing with sea lions is they are bigger, faster and angrier than you might imagine, especially when alert or cornered. Never get between a sea lion and their escape route (usually the ocean). When they are sleeping on the beach, stay 10-20 metres from them because, otherwise, you are just being really annoying. Imagine someone standing over you while you’re sleeping. Creepy.

Of course, traveller Alison lived to tell a good tale. She was 5 metres from the sea lion when she sighted it on the dune path. She walked swiftly along the dunes in the opposite direction to join us on the beach.

Rob and I spent an hour after this on the beach, watching a large male sea lion swimming and mating with a couple of gals, and warning off a younger persistent contender with occasional roars of bravado.

Awesome.

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Ester (pictured in her coffee van) and husband, Jack, run the Surat Bay Lodge. It’s a bright and well-stocked backpackers with a couple of self-contained units, and a range of other room types with shared facilities. We stayed in the double room with a view of the sea. There is a comfortable loungeroom and a sunroom pointing at the ocean. Ester is full of energy and joy. And she has chickens :-).

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