Cape Palliser

Another few photos dug out of my computer. These are from a weekend day trip we took from Wellington to Cape Palliser. The cape is just a few miles east of Wellington on the south coast of the North Island (and is the southern-most point on the island) but it takes a much longer drive over a mountain pass to get there.
We followed the coast to the Cape Palliser lighthouse and seal colony. The day featured high winds coming from the opposite side of the hill from this staircase. It made the climb up the 250 steps calm, but the first thing felt upon reaching the top was a gust causing your brain to fear its hold on the platform.

Underneath the lighthouse platform was a rocky outcrop housing a seal colony. It's far from the first seal colony I've visited here, but it is the closest I've been to a seal - there were several large seals on the rocks right near the access point, and as we climbed around the rocks we got within 10 feet of a few of them.
The seals mostly ignored us and the other tourists, although a few raised their head and growled at people who wandered to close. Since being in New Zealand, I've been warned a number of times about the dangers of seals, mostly if they are being antagonized or if you happen to wander between them and their direct route to the sea. So I didn't do those things. I did, however, almost step on a small seal pup that was hidden among the rocks.