Right in the pods!

Well we landed ok, somehow having used up and entire day travelling from Sydney to Christchurch, which as far as I can see is actually just down the road!

Jumped in the rented Carolla-mobile, found the motor lodge for tonight and crashed out to sleep, the exciting life of a Global Blog Trotter, eh?!

Today though, we bundled up the coast for a 10.30 appointment at Kaikoura, a really cute little town which appears to have enough there to be fun, plus it’s bounded on one side by the pacific, and on the other by some amazing mountains that were permanently shrouded at the top in clouds:

but although the scenery was stunning, I was waaaay too excited about what we were really here for – whale watching! Kaikoura has the privilege of being right on the pacific, and has a peculiar piece of geology which means that about 1 km from the shore, the bottom of the ocean drops away to over a kilometre deep, in fact there is a deep sea canyon that runs right by the shore. As it’s in New Zealand there is a clash of currents that rise up from this canyon, where the Antarctic cold waters meet the warm Pacific currents – this causes an upwelling of nutrient rich waters, which in turn makes loads of great stuff for all sorts of whales to feed on, both krill and squid.

So we jumped aboard one of three purpose built jet boats, and hammered it out to sea, which was more than a little bit rough, but both Suz and I massively enjoyed the ride (lots of the others on board were hurling into their little paper bags!)

We were actually really lucky, as there was a Sperm whale already spotted at the surface as we steamed up, so they cut the engines, and gave us the rare privilege to get really close to one of the giants of the world whilst it spouted at the surface in preparation to dive…

Amazing! How cool is that, huh?! After a short while at the surface spouting, it then arched its back and dived to the abyssal depths, whilst everyone on board snapped away to try and capture it fluking, my camera was just saving a previous series of 15 shots though, so all I captured were the final moments…

So near and yet so far!

We thought that was that, we’d seen a whale so back home we go, but nope – the best was yet to come! There is loads of other wildlife in the bay, so we raced back towards shore (more giggling from Suz and I, more Technicolor yawns from everyone else!) dashing past floating albatrosses, until we saw about 200 fins racing towards us to greet us!

These were a single pod of about 200 Dusky dolphins, and they were obviously well fed, as they were soooo playful! They raced into our bow wave, then jumped all around the boat for ages, playing tag, rolling, leaping and generally looking like they were having a fabulous time!

And then they were joined by a cheeky Fur seal, who was obviously enjoying the attention and having a general brilliant muck about with the dolphins!

All I can say is thank God for digital cameras and large memory cards! I took zillions of snaps! And I shall bore you all with them later!

We were on a real high from seeing all of the wildlife, it was totally amazing! But we must press on, as apparently there’s quite a bit of New Zealand left to see, and see it I must! So we then jumped back in the Corolla-mobile and hot-footed in right across the country over the Lewis Pass and the mountains that dissect the country in two, and headed for Reefton, which apparently holds the honour of being the ‘Town of Lights’ – it was the first place in the South Island to receive electric lighting! (I didn’t dare say ‘In 1985 – joke!’, as I think the locals may have killed me!)