Kaikoura/wellington 4-7/2

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The highlight of Kaikoura was the dolphin swim, it was absolutely amazing. We got 2 swims and there were about 20 dolphins swimming around the group each time. At first it felt a little funny because you had to sort of sing and make noises to get them interested in you. When you had their interest you had to maintain eye contact and swim in circles with them to keep them interested. I managed to do this a couple of times and 1 dolphin stayed with me for ages and only left a couple of times to get a breath before leaving me properly. Kaikoura is a really good place to swim with dolphins as they are Dusky dolphins, which are apparently more sociable and playful than other types of dolphins, they were definately prettier. They also let you in the water with baby dolphins and i actually saw a few jumping out of the water when we were back on the boat. A couple of the dolphins were also somersaulting out of the water when we got back on the boat, but I only managed to get a photo of them splashing back into the water. It was such an amazing experience (thankyou mum and dad for the money to be able to do this- I appreciate it so much). On the boat we also saw an albatross and we got hot chocolate and biscuits on the way back.

When I got back to the hostel I met up with Dave and we went on a clifftop walk where we saw two seal colonies and actually managed to get really close to some of the seals.

We ended the day with some live music at south bay which was really nice and chilled out before heading back up to Picton the next day to get the ferry back to the north island.

The ferry ride was much better than on the way down as we had a gorgeous day and there loads of people dressed up for the rugby sevens. We only stayed in Wellington for 1 night as we have already done everything we want to here.

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