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Published: January 27th 2008
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26th January 2008
Last night we had our best meal out in New Zealand so far much to Annette and Vern's surprise. Kaikoura was a place they used to race through on the way to ski as it had very little to offer especially in the way of eating places. Since the advent of the whale watching project the town has expanded and improved and has a lot to offer visitors . We went to the 42o 25' minutes restaurant which was very pleasant with a proprietor who hailed from Dorking in Essex and had been in NZ for 2 years . Vern and Bob had the roast rack of pork Annette had ribeye steak and Dinah had bruchetta with extra vegatables. We had a bottle of Zenopath Shiraz, from Pongururu in Western Australia to wash the meal down and they were all superb. I took a picture of the building which was one of the oldest on the esplanade.
It rained overnight and this morning it was still very overcast and cloudy first thing but as the day has gone on it has brightened up and we now have clear blue skies and bright sunshine in late afternoon.
This morning
we were taken out on a high speed cataraman to look for whales. The technique seemed to be to blast out to sea for 5 miles or so and then drop a directional hydrophone over the side and listen for the whales calling to each other. Having established the direction of a call the hunt starts and as you get closer the crew start looking for the spouts of water that the whales blow out when they are on the surface. The whales were very dispersed across a large area. After about an hour's sailing a whale was spotted. At first it just looked like an enormous log drifting in the water. As we got closer you could see the texture of the whale's skin and see the spout of water being blown out every few minutes. On the surface you can only see about a third of the whale's total body length. After the whale has been on the surface for 15 or 20 minutes it dives for up to 2 hours into the depths to feed and as they dive you get to see it's very large tail fluke.
After that the boat made it's way back towards
the shore looking out for other whales or dolphins. Much closer to the shore we came across a very large school of dolphins. There must have been several hundred of them chasing fish and leaping in and out of the water. The boat stayed by the dolphins for about half an hour and at times the boat was surrounded by them. A few of the dolphins would leap high into the air well clear of the water and there was one really showing off by doing backflips in the air before crashing back into the water. It was a spectacular sight.
Our time on the boat was nearly over but on the way back to the jetty it slowed down by a small island and we could see fur seals clinging to the ledges on the island. There were mostly young seals waiting for their mums to come back from fishing.
We have now moved on from Kaikoura even further south down the coastline and then inland on the start of our trip across to the West coast and are now in Rangioria, just north of Christchurch.
Our motel here does not have an internet connection so I may have
to go in search of an internet cafe or wait until we get to the next motel in Hokitika on the West coast of the South Island after we have crossed Arthur's pass through the mountains.
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amy
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i was thinking of you!!
I thought of you watching whales on Saturday while i was still on friday tea time! It looks amazing and you have captured some really good snaps, i bet it was fab being there and seeing them jump. Great to catch up finally on Skype. take care all