You don’t have to pay to see penguins, however. One evening I headed out to Sandfly Bay and followed the Department of Conservation signs down a steep track to the beach. At one end of the beach a female Hookers sealion, eyes closed, was squirming herself into a comfort­able depression in the sand. Flies crawled over her eyelids and each breath puffed a shower of sand grains away from her recumbent snout. A few members of this rare species are now resident around the peninsula, and fur seals are not uncommon.