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Published: June 29th 2008
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I´m too sexy for my wetsuit.....
Lisa you thought the pictures of me in the bob hat were bad. Kaikora & Nelson April 08
We had been looking forward to visiting Kaikoura due to it´s whale and dolphin trips which we had heard so much about. We made our way over from the South Islands west coast the the east coast, the drive took longer than we had anticipated. Obviously the van wasn´t so keen on hills, most of them I was doing in 2nd gear with my foot to the floor, to cut a long story short we needed a break.
We stopped off at Moira thermal pools. We stayed there for about two hours, having a dip in quite a few different pools of varying temperatures. It was a cold evening so sitting in warm pools looking up at a perfectly clear starry sky was beltin, I was just missing a beer. Even the slightly eggy sulphur smell didn´t spoil the relaxing atmosphere. We were still quite far away but feeling so much better we carried on driving to Kaikoura.
We had booked a whale watching trip for the following morning, we arrive at about 11pm knackered and not really caring much about where we parked the van to sleep for the night. A town
centre pay and display did the job nicely, although when you need the toilet at 5am it´s not so good! The next morning on the boat Gill was looking an odd shade of green and wasn´t feeling to well with the chopiness of the sea, oh dear! After about 40 minutes on the boat the first whale was spotted, it was sleeping on the surface. It was amazing to see one close up, you really appreciate the size of them. After five minutes of the sleepy fella doing, well nothing really we went to look for some more whales. The crew listened out for whales using some kind of sonar equipment and they did manage to find another whale who was on his way up to the surface, he was a bit more interesting, he came up for air and then dove back down again showing us his huge tail. We also saw a sealion close by just casually relaxing in the sea not the least bit bothered by two huge boats and a whale.
We then headed back to shore, on the way back we spotted a shed load of dolphins (you know..... pride of lions, skool of
fish, shed load of dolphins....). There must have been about 150 of them happily swimming alongside the boat, we couldn´t wait for the dolphin trip the next day. We were only 20 minutes away from the shore when the sea got even rougher, I wasn´t sat next to Gill, so I looked over to see how she was.......greener than ever with a full sick bag in her hand!
After another night spent in our favourite pay and display we went on the trip to swim with the dolphins. We plied Gill with a massive dose of travel sickness tablets and some anti sickness wrist bands for good measure. We were each given a thick wetsuit, a snorkel, fins and a hood to look the part as you can see from the picture. We got on the boat and sailed out to sea for about 20 mins until we found the dolphins, we then all sat on the back of the boat and when we got close enough a horn sounded to indicate it was time to get in. The water was freezing and it must have been quite an amusing sight to see 15 people swimming around 'dolphin like'
Right then, i´m off
Glimpse of the back fin , before he dives again making ridiculous squeaking noises to attract their interest. We felt like complete idiots but when a dolphin swam right underneath me coming very close to have a look I didn't care, it was really amazing. We were very lucky as there were a lot of dolphins there that day, about 300 of them. As we were swimming back to the boat we saw a few summersaulting high into the air, it had been a really brilliant day plus as an added bonus Gill didn´t throw up !
From Kaikoura we drove upto Nelson, we had heard that it was a pleasant town to spend a couple of days in but when we arrived the weather was awful, it just rained all day long. we did attempt to walk around and see a bit but it was just miserable so we opted for a curry followed by several beers instead. The next day the weather was the same so we decided to leave for the north Island.
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chris
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after your comments about a lack of comments, im commenting. nice pictures, just to clarify, how many dolphins do you need before they change from a shed load to a boat load??? and how long as gill had the ability to lure eels from the water by waving her fist at them??