Curio Bay: Penguins, Seals and Moonrises

After our amazing dinner at the (award-winning) Niagara Falls Cafe, we headed back to our little hotel in Curio Bay. We heard from the other guests that penguins--and maybe some seals--would be out at a nearby beach at around 8:00 or 8:30pm that night.

That beach (also the site of a forest from millions of years ago that became petrified) was just a ten minute walk away, so off we went.

We were not disappointed: there were probably a dozen or so penguins, just hanging around, staring out at the sea, and completely oblivious to the ten or twelve humans standing there gaping at them.






Once it started to get dark, one by one they clumsily started waddling back from the water to the bushes behind the beach. That's where their nests and their babies are, so at that point we had to leave that area of the beach to avoid frightening them away from their homes.

After seeing these yellow-eyed penguins, we found a seal hanging out off to the left of this beach. He was finishing up his daytime sleep, yawning, stretching, and getting ready to look for dinner.






This picture isn't of anything particularly beautiful, and it has nothing to do with penguins or seals, but it is the strangest seaweed I've ever seen. If they don't already call it Gandalf seaweed, they certainly should.


And if seeing all of these amazing animals up close wasn't enough, we were treated to a full moon rising up from the water that evening. It truly was a wonderful night.