Adrift on a small boat on a lake in Namibia twenty nine tourists absorbed the sights and sounds of the magnificent country from the sea. Oysters and champagne were in abundance as the captain explained the ways and wares of this water.
A man of few words he described how the many seals surrounding the boat were prone to climbing on board…as a sort of performance piece you understand. As if on cue a junior seal appeared, to the sounds of ‘Ooohs’, ‘Ahs’ and ‘It’s like a dog but with flippers!’. Standing, if indeed a seal can stand, he peered in, the captain fed him a small fish and satisfied, the seal slipped off into the depths once more.
Pondering life in a daze of contentment, a shadow broke the mid-morning sun. Looking up, a silence descended amid all twenty nine bodies…a seal the size of a ship was suspended mid-air as he somersaulted out of the water flying straight above us and landing with a crash on the seating island in the middle of the boat. The middle seating where I had been sitting with my friend Sammy for most of the trip.
Having landed with brute force I observed this huge beast from the edge, surely the mother of all seals and stopped. There were human legs dangling from its side. Legs belonging to my friend Sammy. Squashed beneath this mound of blubber I grabbed her hand, yanked and pulled her free from the seal to discover she had a broken rib.
This is all true, Sammy is now much recovered, her rib is all fixed, and the seal, well I just have no idea where he is now. There is photographic evidence of this event somewhere…images of people peering at the beast from behind oyster shells and champagne bottles.
About five years later I went swimming with seals in New Zealand. It was cheaper to swim with seals than dolphins…poor seals!
Seals, according to my guide and snorkelling teacher, are your best friends when in the water. The minute you stand on land with them you are competing to be top seal (if I could speak seal I’d tell them this is not an ambition of mine, but alas I do not.) So I was instructed not to get up on the rocks surrounding the open seas I was swimming in. Yes easy for you to say Mr Instructor; tell that to the waves. Fighting the sea with my arms and legs I tried to spend as much time looking at these seals whilst learning how not to drown with my snorkel. It was hard work, not quite the paradise I'd been promised on land!
Things learnt:
Never underestimate nature.
Don’t snorkel in open seas with seals.
Read up about seals beforehand as my instructor may have been pulling my leg. He said that on land seals were faster than cheetahs!
 |
| Photographic evidence: so close I could not capture the whole seal and note my quivering friend in the background. |
