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Published: September 6th 2006
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Saturday 5th August 2006 I stashed my snowboard bag and kites (except the 4.9 Blade which went with me) and caught the (crappy old-looking) Stray bus outside Base hostel on the corner of the Square.
I got onboard and met the driver - called 'Dodgy'... There was one other guy on the bus... Had I choose the wrong company to go with? To make it worse, at one of the stops we made, I spotted the (brand new) buses of Kiwi and Magic - both looking at least half full!
We stopped off at a fur seal colony on the edge of Kaikoura and got up and close with the seals.
I then checked in to the Adelphi Lodge hostel, which was had a good homely feel about it. We got the free soup and bread that was promised by the Strays special offer. As it turned out, pretty much the one and only time! From their website: "receive FREE FOOD around the circuit (one free meal of soup and bread per travel day)"... Bollocks! One free meal of soup and bread more like!
Picked up some nice fish and chips and walked along the
beach to the whale watching centre. We got taken out to the harbor and boarded a high-tech catamaran, with a swanky flat screen that showed you the position of the boat, 3d depth maps, information on various species, etc between whale sightings. Once out to sea, on the flat screen I saw another boat next to ours - look out the window - it was also tracking the sister ships - one of which was along side! It was a very slick operation!
We soon spotted our first sperm whale. They are really remarkable, if for no other reason than they kill and eat great white sharks!! How ‘hard’ is that?! They have throats the size of oil drums, and as the biggest whales with teeth, they can eat giant squid and killer sharks whole! But take the blue whale (no teeth), which is even bigger than the sperm whale - he would choke to death if you threw an orange down his throat! Krill-eating Pussy! Yeah sperm whales rock!
We sighted three sperm whales in the end (see a video
here) and a pod of hundreds of dusky dolphins swimming along the side of the boat -
see
here.
We also saw huge Albatross, with 4m wing spans, flying just centre meters off the water surface.
I had been told Kaikoura was the best place to eat crayfish - after all Kaikoura means ‘crayfish meal’ or ‘to eat crayfish’. I had one cold with chips - yuk! Gave most of mine away!
A load of us from the hostel then went to the Adelphi Bar. We picked a good night - it had live music and the Ripcurl Snow/Surf finals award ceremony. It was still very quiet for Saturday night!
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whales?
I'm lost with the description on the whales... can I please have a diagram??! I could cope with the oil barrel thing... I wondered if you had happened to have the oil barrel (non BBQ option) with you if you could have tested it out?! :-)