Spending time in nature is such a good way to relax. It's so refreshing to feel the sun's warmth on your skin, the fresh air in your lungs, the giant octopus in your face...
Wait, what?
Ok, so getting walloped in the face by an eight-legged cephalopod probably isn't the usual outcome of a kayaking trip - but neither is being attacked by a seal, and yet New Zealander Kyle Mulinder managed to experience both those things at once.
Mulinder, who describes himself on Instagram as a "small town Kiwi boy playing in a big beautiful world", was out kayaking off the coast of New Zealand's South Island this weekend when he accidentally interrupted a fight between a seal and an octopus. As a result, he received a slap across the chops.
But he also got a pretty sweet video out of the deal, so it wasn't all bad:
"We were just sitting out in the middle of the ocean and then this huge male seal appeared with an octopus and he was thrashing him about for ages," Mulinder explained in an interview with Yahoo7 News.
According to him, the two sea creatures wrestled for a while, surfacing briefly and then dipping back under the water while the kayakers watched on. At one point, the seal gained the upper hand (or fin), and managed to launch the octopus out of the water - straight into Mulinder's head.
"He thrashed it in mid-fight and my face happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
He continued: "I was like ‘mate, what just happened?’ It was weird because it happened so fast but I could feel all the hard parts of the octopus on my face like ‘dum dum dum’."
Though the seal appeared to be the victor in the clip, Mulinder says that the octopus won overall.
Of course, this was a once-in-a-lifetime shot for Mulinder and his friend, Taiyo Masua, who recorded the footage - but the pair have seen some pretty amazing things while travelling before. A quick skim through their two Instagram pages shows them jumping from planes, hanging with sharks, spotting wild dolphins, and leaping off cliffs.
It is evident from these pictures and clips that both Mulinder and Masua have no problem putting themselves in risky situations every now and then, but what they might not have realised is how close they came to danger with this most recent escapade. Seals have been known to attack and kill people in the past before, and who knows what might have happened if the kayaker had been knocked into the water during the battle.
Thankfully, though, nobody was seriously harmed in this particular incident.