Feb 20 - Thar she blows.

We checked out of jail and hit the road right at 8:30am, right at the peak of rush hour. When I entered our destination into the GPS, Judith told me to make a right turn out of the car park. This is the equivalent of a left turn in the states. It was against heavy traffic, so I decide to make a left turn and let Judith figure out what I should do next.

The traffic was pretty heavy in spots, but the behavior of the drivers was significantly more cordial than those here in RTP. When 2 lanes would go down to 1, everybody merged together taking turns, without any pushing and shoving, or "me firsts". This might have been an anomaly, but it sure was nice. We get out of town and stop for coffee and a bite for breakfast, before heading on to Kaikoura.

We get to the whale watch place a little bit early so we sit outside in the tailgate of the car and put on sunscreen. Parked across from us is a young couple who are obviously traveling in their car, and they are checking us out as I organize my camera gear for the boat trip. This makes us a little bit nervous, since we are going to leave the car for about 4 hours, but they leave for a walk before we do, and we figure they were just looking at the only thing that was going on around them.

Time comes for the tour and we head inside for a quick "briefing". There is a little panic, becuase we left our boarding passes in the car when we came back out, so Katie and I run out and dig out the passes and get on the bus that takes us to the south bay wharf where the whale watch boat is waiting for us.

One of the striking things about Kaikoura is that there are snow topped mountains surrounding the peninsula. It is very beautiful.

The whale watch tour is a 4 hour tour where they boat you out to an area where sperm whale are known to feed. It is a 1600m deep trench that comes very close to the shore line, making it easy to get to. We get in a large catamaran and start motoring out to the trench.




The boat absolutely flies across the waves crashing through some 8-10ft tall swells, throwing water more than 20 ft into the air as we cruise along for about 20 minutes or so. We see our first whale just as it is diving to feed. We cruise around and find several more through the use of an underwater microphone. What you see with the sperm whale is that they come to the surface, then breathe several times, spending about 10-15 min on top, and then they dive straight down sending their tails up into the air as they dive. They stay down for about 45 min. before they return to the surface. It was really cool to see them up so close. It was also very difficult to take photos, because the seas were pretty big, and I had to wrap an arm around the edge of the boat to steady myself as we rocked around.






Before we came back to dock, we stopped and looked at a giant pod of dusky dolphins. There were several hundred of them playing around in the water just off the coastline. They were jumping and flipping all over the place. It was like a circus on speed.



That was the sight that made us decide to try to get on one of the dolphin tours the following day that put you in the water in the middle of these things. We didn't hold much hope that we would be able to, since all the guidbooks said we need to book at least 2-3 weeks in advance. We figured we'd try anyway, though.


We stopped by the dolphin encounter place and they said that there was space on the 12:30pm tour, but for spectating only, no swimming. We decided to check back after we did the peninsula walk tomorrow, and perhaps hop on if there was still space.

We checked into our Hostel, the Sunrise Lodge, Mark and his wife (who was about 8 months pregnant) showed us around the place and gave us good tips for doing the walk around the seal colony. We head that way to see if there were any seals around. We stopped at a roadside barbeque grill where a lady was grilling fresh seafood, and had a crayfish fritter, and some green shell mussels, which were delicious and cheap. At the end of the road which goes down to the end of the Kaikoura peninsula, there is a seal colony with male seals lounging around on the rocks.



They come ashore some too, and are not at all bothered by people. You can get as close as you dare to these things, I think the closest I got was about 10-12 feet or so, but I kept a good eye on him the whole time. One seal barked at me and gave me a start, so I backed off a little.





We did a little grocery shopping and turned in for the evening after a dinner of fish and chips and Speight's Gold Medal Ale...