Northbound

Due to the earthquakes in Christchurch the Kiwi bus no longer has this as an overnight stop, you can hop off if you like however the bus continues all the way to Kaikoura almost 800km from Queenstown so a long day on the coach, this is what we opt for. Kairkoura is a small town but being next to a deep trench in the ocean has an abundance of marine life there, seal colonies on the beaches and well known for seeing Wales, dolphins and much more. We are there for the Dolphins, checking in to one of the weirdest hostels we have seen, with no reception and not many people either. 

We wake early and although we headed north with blue skies the grey storms that are chasing us around have caught up again, on arriving at the dolphin tour offices they take us all through some safety and information on the animals before saying that the sea state is heavy and that anyone may leave with a full refund, everyone stays and wetsuits up but as we find later, that may have been the best idea for some. We go out on two boats both quite large, the sea doesn't look too bad but on leaving the harbour I soon realised the swell was larger than it looked, quite quickly a few people become sea sick, but with the rough seas and high winds it's a great day for bird watching and I ended up seeing loads of sea birds including a few wandering albatross.

The crew spot a small pod of dolphins and drop us in off the back, with only snorkels and flippers the swell makes it hard to watch them and soon they disperse, they tell us that we have to make the dolphins interested in us by making noises and trying to swim down. The next drop is a little more successful but still only lasted a few minutes, the final drop and they pod is much larger, nearer to 50 dusky dolphins, all making noises and swimming around a fair few decided to have a play and are intrigued by us. If you follow them round you often end up swimming into other divers and I think they seem to make a game of this in the end. We are there for a good while until finally the horn goes and it's back to the boat.

The crew them find the pod again and give us a talk all about the dusky dolphins, amazingly at this point a few has started jumping and flipping all around us and others are swimming around the front of the boat playing in the bow wave.

Finally we have to leave on returning to the back of the boat I find that about ¾ of the tourists are now looking pretty worse for ware or cuddling a bucket.

Back on dry land and little to do with most places closing quite early so with all the travelling around New Zealand we thought it was time to watch lord of the rings.