Seals and Dolphins and Whales, Oh My! (Kaikoura)

Saturday, December 10, 2005

What a day, what a day, what an awesome day! I never thought this trip could get better but wow did it. It started out at 5:30 am this morning. We drove from Blenheim to Kaikoura in very nasty rain. It was about a 1 1/2 hour drive and all the way was very curvy and no places to stop. It was all green hills and then the ocean the entire way.

We arrived at Kaikoura this morning and had breakfast at a local cafe. We then went on to our first stop...Dolphin Encounters. This is where we actually got to go swimming with wild Dusky dolphins. We have swum with trained bottlenose dolphins but this was so much better. We were literally in the water for a total combined time of about an hour swimming with almost 100 wild dolphins. It was the most unbelievable feeling in the world. I cannot even describe what it is like to be in the open ocean water with almost 100 dolphins surrounding you at once. At one time I had almost 12 dolphins swimming right underneath me. Amazing!!!! I just can't get over the fact that we actually were there doing that. The trip begins with the typical wet suit trying on, video, drive, and then we boat out to find the dolphins. They do not track or feed the dolphins just try to find them. There is an area where the continental shelf divide is, and the cold and warm waters merge, that is where they usually hang out. We rode out in the boat for about 30 minutes when we found our first drop. We all slide into the water gracefully and then start swimming about and making noises to play with the dolphins. The will come right up to you and swim underneath you and around you, it is the greatest feeling. When the dolphins start to swim away, you load back up into the boat and they take you to them again. We did this 5 times in about 2 hours, which meant we were in the water for about an hour with the dolphins. After we were completely done with that we took pictures and videos of the dolphins swimming and playing for more than 20 minutes. At this time several dolphins began to do flips and jump, even the babies, it was the cutest thing. Don't worry, we have lots of pictures and video of this.

After the dolphin encounter we went back to the main area of town and grabbed a bite to eat. We then killed time until our next stop, whales! We took another bus and yet another boat out to the ocean again, this time in search of sperm whales. We rode around for a while, went to the deck, saw nothing, went back to our seats, rode around some more, etc. Finally, we came across the sperm whale. It is very interesting, all of the sperm whales in this area are males, and they stay surfaced for almost 10 minutes digesting their food, cleaning their system, and gathering more air. They actually stay down in the water for about 60 minutes at a time before surfacing. We watched the whale blow water out of his blow hole and then he made his decent. It was amazing watching this mammoth whale dive back down into the ocean, tail fin last. Have lots of pictures of that too. Before we headed back we actually ran into a second whale who was surfacing. We repeated the process of watching and waiting until he descended again. Then it was back to land.

We made our way back to Blenheim but still had one more stop to make. We came across a Seal Colony at Ohau Point, north of Kaikoura, where we proceeded to take pictures and videos of them as well.

Then we did actually finally make it back to Blenheim for dinner and we are now settling into bed for the evening.

Tomorrow we are off to Queenstown, adventure capital of New Zealand. Time will only tell what will happen in this action packed town.

Tami