Kaikoura

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We get up, get ready and take off for the Kaikoura Peninsula Walk. We hike along the seaside road about one hour when we arrive at the seal colony. The seals are pretty far out in the water on the rocks. We climb up the hill to the Clifftop Walk and walk around the point of the peninsula. We then drop down into the village at South Bay before crossing over the hill back to Kaikoura. The entire walk takes us about three hours. Since I want to get laundry done before we get to a hotel in Wellington, I stay at the motel and Michael walks down to town to get take-away for our lunch. By the time our laundry is done, it is time to walk to the Whale Watching Center to check-in for our scheduled whale watching tour.
We are loaded on a bus and taken to South Bay to board the boat that will take us out to view the Sperm Whales. The boat is a large catamaran capable of doing 35 knots. We had to sit in the cabin while we are speeding out to sea. There is an undersea canyon near Kaikoura that allows the whales to dive deeply to feed. The canyon is about 1600 meters deep at its deepest point. We barely got over the canyon when we saw our first Sperm Whale. The company that took us out has four boats running and they track the whales via GPS. They know the whales stay down from 40 to 60 minutes and they know when and where they went down so they are pretty successful at finding the whales. During our trip we saw four Sperm Whales, a small pod of Dusky Dolphins and the captain took us near the rocks where the New Zealand Fur Seals were resting. Between whale sightings one of the crew gave interesting talks about the whales and the geography of the area. It was a magnificent trip.
We returned by bus to Kaikoura and walked back into town where we stopped for dinner. It was a busy day for us and we were tired.

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