Day 100: Kaikoura's resident dusky dolphins‏

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We'd had to plan today down to the tee as we had finished our Kiwi Experience pass and New Zealand's poor public transport system had let us down. The planning was all going to be worth it - to swim with the dusky dolphins. But then the weather played havoc again, and rough sea conditions meant the likelihood of our trip being cancelled was high. We arrived in Kaikoura (in our seriously old rented Nissan Sunny - which we named Sunshine after our Thai tour guide) to find that the trip would go ahead, but as usual we had to sign our lives away with an additional warning that the sea's were dangerous today! By the time we reached the first dolphin pod, the sea's were a bit calmer and everyone was keen to get swimming. The dolphins are seriously cute (like fluffy bunny cute) and if you make funny noises they come really close and swim around you! The visibility was a little poor due to the weather and not being able to see too far under the water did creep me out a little bit! Luckily the sperm wales live further off shore! In total we saw over 300 dolphins today - definitely glad we persevered through the rain. The last night of our trip consisted of an egg and baked bean dinner and a celebratory Bundaberg Ginger beer! Hardcore...

Bailey's bit: The dolphins are extremely playful, if you start circling when they come up to you they will follow until they become either bored or dizzy. However there best tricks are for when we were at the surface, they fly out of the water and will twist, spin and flip. In fact we saw one perform 5 back flips in a row, although the record is apparently 36! One thing we were warned about before the trip was the moderate to heavy seas or 2-3 on a 3 point scale. We made sure we took our tablets with plenty of time for them to work, others in our group weren't so smart. Of the 9 in the tour, 5 made acquaintance with a bucket so it left more hot chocolate and biscuits for the 4 of us!

Daily mileage: 7(am) ran to the airport to pick up the car, I was told it was around 12k but it is more 10k although I had to be directed to the company which was a little outside the airport.
6(pm) after dropping off the car I ran back to the hostel, it was getting late so decided to up the pace a little, did the distance in just over 34 minutes.

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