Baby Seals and Rainbows

Sorry this week’s post is delayed—I was Skyping with my family on Monday my time and was immediately accosted by Anna as to its whereabouts. Turns out she reads it after all, even if it does get a little boring from time to time!

Anyway, not much happened this past week, except on Sunday, which was the reason for the delay. My Maori Studies class, The Peopling of Polynesia, had a field trip planned two weeks ago that was cancelled due to weather. This past Sunday, it was rescheduled and we were able to go to Palliser Bay. It turned out to be all of the American students in addition to one Kiwi student (figures…), but it was really fun. Laura, Jessica and I were in our professor’s van along with a girl from Uni of Iowa (I told her how I had driven from Elkridge to Iowa City in one day…she was impressed!) who was a music major! So that was fun. She was also impressed with my knowledge of drum corps and marching band for being a flute player (it made me feel special). Our teacher, Peter (everyone calls their professors by their first names here…it was a little strange at first, but I’ve adjusted. I guess I’ll have to adjust back before heading back to school in the fall) was giving us a lot of interesting information as he was driving. Some of those roads could hardly have been called roads, especially when we were on the way to the seal colony.

But! Before the seal colony, we stopped at a pa site, which is a Maori fortification site. Basically, it was where everyone camped out during wars back in the day. We had to map it out which was a bit challenging, but it was really neat to see an archaeological site from the 1800s (not that old in comparison with the Maori history, who probably arrived in New Zealand around 1250). We were able to see old kumara pits (they seem similar to sweet potatoes) used to store food to last through the winter and ditch and bank systems that were used to keep the enemy from approaching too quickly. It was extremely foggy when we arrived, but cleared up pretty quickly during the hour or so we spent there. Then we headed to a nearby hotel/restaurant for lunch. Luckily Laura, Jessica and I had brought our own because there were about fifty motorcycles parked out front. We ended up hanging around there for a while since it took people so long to get their food. While hanging out in the back of the van with Peter, another American girl and I realized that her brother went to UMBC. And I knew his girlfriend since I had a seminar with her last year, and just helped elect her honors college president. Small world indeed! Peter then said that it happens every year in his class…two Americans who live a block apart or something ridiculous meet each other in his class. Crazy how these things happen when you’re in New Zealand and not when you’re in Maryland!

We headed to the seal colony, which was right on the coast. The coastline was very unique, and Peter said it was different than any other coastline in New Zealand. It had giant rock formations spread throughout, both on land and a little out to sea. It was a little creepy, especially with some of the fog still hanging around. On to the seals…there were tons and tons of them, including lots of baby seals! There were a lot laying around on the rocks being friendly (as in they allowed us to photograph them). Laura and I were heading around the side of a giant rock formation when a nearby bush growled at us. Yes. Well, we thought it was the bush…turns out there were a least a few seals hanging out under there. They make the weirdest noises…from growling to yowling to barking to sneezing to whatever else you can imagine. We were there for about an hour before Peter started herding us back to the cars…just in time to see the sun start setting over the coastline, which looked fantastic with the fog and the rocks and the waves. Hopefully some of my pictures turned out!

The other exciting event for the week was rainbows! That’s right, baby seals and rainbows. You can’t get much better than that. We saw one on the trip home from Palliser Bay across the mountains and then today in Wellington. It was so neat! At home, I’ve only really seen little bits of one, but both of these were full semi-circles with all of the colors clearly depicted. Of course, I don’t have a picture of either one, but I think Jessica and Laura do so I will be stealing theirs!