After a good night’s sleep in the colonial cottage, we woke up in Flea Bay to a beautifully clear and sunny morning. With almost no wind it meant that conditions were perfect for us to head out onto the water with the guide. We launched our sea kayaks from the beach and paddled over to the far side of Flea Bay.
The lower slopes of Flea Bay are quite rocky and as we got closer we could see that there were lots of seals out on the rocks enjoying the early morning sunshine. Our guide explained that at this time of year they are mostly females keeping an eye on their young.
We floated alongside the rocks for a while watching the young seals play on the rocks and in the small pools. The two seals in the picture above entertained us for quite some time as they encouraged each other over the rocks in search of adventure.
As the conditions were so calm, we were able to make our way into a sea cave in the rocks. The cave went all the way through to form a tunnel and the the extra light meant that we were able to see all the way to the bottom of the cave through the turquoise water to the kelp below us.
Leaving the cave behind, we paddled out to the mouth of the of the bay. As we bobbed around looking back at the hills we had walked down the previous day, we were joined by a group of Hector’s Dolphins. Hector’s Dolphins are some of the rarest dolphins, with just 10,000 estimated to live in a few of the bays around New Zealand. These tiny dolphins (adults are just 1.4 m (4.6 ft) in length) seemed quite curious and spent some time around our kayaks before heading off to take advantage of the large amounts of food that were in the area.
After the dolphins headed out to sea, we made our way across the bay to the other side of the inlet where we were treated to some more glimpses of penguins. The Fiordland penguin above had almost finished its molt and with all of it’s new feathers looked really pretty.
We finished paddling our loop around the bay and returned to shore to pack up our things and catch a ride back over the hill to Akaroa. We were pleased we were able to squeeze in one last adventure and felt really lucky to have seen so much rare wildlife in such a short space of time and so close to home.