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Published: March 6th 2008
Albatross
Can you tell how massive this bird is from this pic?! I hope so! Date visited: 6 March
The only real appeal of Kaikura is what is out of sea (under the water) than on the land itself.
You may have heard of the Whale watching here - its one of those must-see / do activities so we did it yesterday!
The boat took us out at 9.30am and the sea was rough (be it a sunny day). People were feeling queezy before even getting to the whale area (about 5 miles out to sea). We were warned of the 3 metre swell on the ocean, so just before boarding the boat I whipped to the chemist to get 'Kaikura Cracker' - a strong anti motion sickness pill.
We were both feeling dodgy even with this but not enough to rush to the deck - unlike 4 or 5 other people!
We saw our first Whale after only 15 mins! they re-surface every 45 minutes for 15 minutes to get air, before diving deep down into the trench oncemore. This area of New Zealand is one of the best in the world for seeing Sperm whales, dusky dolphins, Albatross (wing spans of upto 4 metres!!) and Seals. We saw the
Dusky Dolphins
Very hard to take the pic whilst all in the air in perfect unison whole lot!
The 3 hour excursion was about 60 quid but I am glad we did it - the water was blue coloured so it was easy to spot the dolphins (hundreds in their pods playing and doing jumps for us by the boat) - I so could have dived out and had a swim with them!
It was really difficult taking decent pictures - partly because I was still feeling ill, but the boat was moving a lot and so it made it tough for focusing. There was an annoying delay using the shutter button so by the time I took the pic the dolphin would have ducked down again, or a wave would conceal the whale. We saw two of the whales and I managed to get one of its tail as it dived (but not as good as the postcards!)
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