As the egg was being peeled for lunch on the rocks, the seals below were preparing for a conference.
The howling and barking echoed from the walls suggested that the sun bathing demonstrations are about to begin.
Next on the schedule was the much anticipated workshop – “help! I’m stuck in kelp”- how to perform tricks to impress your mates without getting tangled in a sea forest.
The keynote barker, Rufus Demaaj delivered a lecture about the danger of humans and how to lure them into the ocean so the sharks will eat them first, with the hope they’ll be so disgusted to never return to the area gain, thus making the oceans a safer place for seals.
The conference continued until the late afternoon and everyone had a good time.
The strange obsession of progressing vertically up a rock, brings one to magical places, hidden from the eye of everyday tourists. Their journey might begin and end at the same parking lot, but the adventure is often very different.
It is true that vertical progress is a much slower process than regular horizontal walking, but the slow rate of movement opens the door to a more nuanced observation of the surrounding beauty of nature.
An observation deck at the end of a two hour hike gives the impression that the journey reached its peak, and now it is time to observe a little and return to the car park. A linear horizontal journey. It is not boring but nature has more to offer when other dimensions are considered a fair game.
Nature itself is an observation deck and details are truly remarkable if patience is exercised. The story unfolds.
The unremarkably named Remarkable Cave is probably very remarkable, it was formed, in a remarkable occurrence of convenience right next to the parking lot, much to the delight of nature thirsty tourists who can quench their thirst remarkably quickly after disembarking from their vehicle.
Other remarkable things exist in the vicinity of the car park. such as the blow hole, which is more specifically named but sometimes fail to meet the description and can be completely ignored by unsuspecting hikers expecting a big blowing ocean when the reality is less remarkable and more like a stormy puddle.
Arguably more remarkable (even more than the car park) is a hidden track known to climbers (and possibly some lost seals) descending to the waterline and leading to the bottom of a spectacular dolerite cliff with a hint of granite. Climbers have been coming here to embark on short vertical ascents in which they reflect on how unremarkable their ability to ignore gravity is and how it feels like to be in paradise.
This place was named Paradiso.
