5.42pm - Hanging With The Hectors

  Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand
Saturday, December 6, 2008

Saturday 6 December, 5.42pm, my studio

I will never again complain about the hordes of people at the Trafford Centre, because NZ shopping is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE. A disaster has befallen me - it would not be a disaster in Manchester because I would just go to the TC, or hell, into town, and fix it. NOT BLOODY HERE, though. Even the big cities act like it's the

First signs that all was not well, camerawise

bloody fifties. The problem I am facing? I got my camera wet today (yes, I'm a twat, but it was a boat, what do you expect) and it has now decided it hates me and stopped working. I was going to pop out and get a cheapo one to last me until the end of this trip and then buy a new decent one when I get home (mine has been battered about the last couple of years anyway, I was already considering getting a new one in Jan when the sales are on). However, we didn't get back to Christchurch until after 5pm, when EVERY SINGLE STORE IN THE CITY HAS SHUT. I don't understand it, but it's true - everything that doesn't have a liquor licence shuts after 5. WHY????? This is supposed to be a bustling metropolis, and today, incidentally, is the third to last Saturday before Christmas, but no - even the stores in Auckland (NZ's biggest city) and Wellington (the capital) shut at 5! It is sick, sick and wrong, and I like it not at all.

Okay, rant over, I shall attempt to be normal now.

Today, tacky or not, camera debacle or not, was fucking excellent.

Got picked up bright and early not in the coach or minibus I was expecting, but by a bloke in a people carrier. There were only three of us coming in from Christchurch, and we were all on our own, so there was plenty of banter about various adventures we'd been on. In yet another example of small-world-ness, along with an American girl called Danielle who'd been studying in Sydney and was travelling round NZ for six months before heading home to Connecticut for Christmas, the other person was Isabelle, a Mexican girl who has been living in Auckland for the past eight months, that I met on the Queenstown Wine Trail a few days ago.

We were driving to Akaroa, which is about 80km from Christchurch, out on the Banks Peninsula. Our driver,

Akaroa Harbour

Hugh, told us that a lot of the residences in Akaroa are holiday homes, for owners from all over NZ but also Christchurch. It's where you'd go to for a day out if you lived in Christchurch, basically (and indeed, I met a girl on the boat who lived in Christchurch). Only about 5,000 people live in Akaroa on a permanent basis, it's a tourist town. The drive was stunning, but then, aren't they all? It's almost, ALMOST getting old, how gorgeous the scenery is - I think it's because it's so frustrating to take pics and know that they can never begin to capture the scale and the colours and the sheer magnitude of the views.

1,494 not pictured

The mountains, fields, lakes, rivers - they're all so big, and there's so bloody many of them, it's crazy. I'm so glad I hired a car, though, I feel like I've at least seen a little more of NZ than I've necessarily visited, because I've driven past a lot of things. I think on a coach or train I'd have lost interest in the scenery after a while, but of course, while driving you're forced to look at it all the time, so I've seen things I might have missed had I had my nose in a book - like the 1,500 cyclists we passed on the way to Akaroa today, for example!

Danielle was supposed to be swimming, but she'd gotten a rash on her leg from the protective clothing when she did the glacier walk at Franz Josef, and couldn't manage it, so she and Isabelle set off on their dolphin cruise while I detoured for the dolphin swim. I had assumed we'd all be on the same boat, as Lisa, Laura and I were, but no, it was two separate things. Still fun though, I made friends with a couple of German girls, Jenny and Petra, on my boat, so had someone to shiver with after we got out.

Wetsuited & booted

The good thing about my trip, actually, was that it was specifically geared towards swimming with dolphins, rather than looking at them - as soon as we found a pod we could swim with (only our second one, within about ten minutes - you can't swim if they have calves, that's more or less the only restriction) we got straight in and stayed in the water for 45 minutes. It was really cold when you first got in, but within a couple of minutes, most of me was fine, because every inch of me except my head and hands was covered in wetsuit material. My hands were in some serious pain after the first couple of minutes, but after another ten minutes, they were fine. Besides, I was far too concerned with the amount of seawater I was swallowing and my imminent drowning of that - I've never swum in the open ocean before and couldn't get a handle on the waves, but our guide saw that I was about to die and yelled a couple of suggestions (get your feet down and keep your mouth shut, basically) and it all got a lot easier after that.

The dolphins most commonly found around Akaroa Harbour are Hector's Dolphins, named after some dude called Hector (I have a leaflet, but who can be bothered to walk across the room to get it?). They're only found in NZ,

Hector's Dolphin

and so are sometimes also known as the New Zealand Dolphin. They're some of the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world, but still very friendly and totally adorable - they have rounded dorsal black dorsal fins, like Mickey Mouse ears, and black patches over each eye. Apparently this has given rise to the nickname "the pandas of the sea". Like, way to combine two of the most adorable species of animal, there. We saw maybe four on the way to the place where we got in, and then there were about five that stayed with us almost the whole time we were in the water. Don't have any pics of me with the dolphins, because sadly I was all on my lonesome, and the only official pic they took of me, I have obviously just been splashed because I am screwing my face up, so didn't much fancy paying for that. Therefore you will just have to believe me when I say that one swam so close I could have reached out and touched it, except we had been told strictly no touching because we could hurt them and certainly would scare them off (they're all wild, obviously, so though humans aren't unfamiliar to them, they aren't so used to us that they'd be happy to be manhandled), and also that at one point two swam straight at me, then split at the last second and slid past either side of me just inches away and so smoothly that it seemed like we'd rehearsed it.

After the 45 minutes were up, we were scooped up by the boat and furnished with towels, hot chocolate, and a hot water hose (GENIUS idea - you stick it down the front of your wetsuit and turn it on and it fills the wetsuit with hot water and makes you toasty warm for long enough to get back to shore). Most people went back and sat in the cabin to warm up, but

Following us back to shore

Jenny and I were loving the views and watching a couple of dolphins who had decided to follow us, so we hung out at the back of the boat until we arrived back at Akaroa. Met back up with Danielle, Isabelle and Hugh and we headed back to Christchurch just in time for me to have the shitfit above about my camera. The main reason I'm schizing out so much is because tomorrow's activity, besides driving to Kaikoura and possibly hunting for an electronics shop, is hot air ballooning over Christchurch! I was all excited to take some more scenery pics to bore you all with. My camera is currently sat in front of the air conditioning, which is cranked up to hot air, so here's hoping once it dries out it will deign to switch on again? I hope, I hope. I can pick up some cheapy 5mp thing for $100ish to tide me over if not, so I'll be able to take more photos over the next few days, but won't be able to get any whilst ballooning, as I set off at 4.45am, before the shops open. Sniff.

Either way, like Cher's Alaia dress, it was worth the sacrifice to the party gods, I think. I had a really great day, and I'm kind of sad for Laura, the American from Paihia who was so unbelievably excited about swimming with dolphins, because I was only 6/10 excited and I had a much better experience than she did. I'm very glad I took Col's advice and waited for the South Island to do it, though - it was colder, but better. Mind you, the fact that it was colder meant that paradoxically, I was probably warmer - Lisa and Laura were just wearing those half-wetsuits, with the short sleeves and short legs, with a pair of flippers, whereas I was wearing a full wetsuit down to my wrists and ankles, with these awesome sort of wetboot things that tucked under the wetsuit and zipped up to keep my feet warm. I didn't even use the hot water hose when I got out - as soon as my hands were dry, I was quite happy, the rest of me was actively warm, rather than just "not freezing". We also got free hot chocolate, which was the shizzle (didn't realise how cold my hands still were until Erin, one of the guides, handed me a cup of chocolate), and because we got changed in the changing rooms at the docks and then wore our wetsuits back to shore, we didn't have to lug anything around, strip off on the boat, worry about our towels or shoes or valuables getting wet, etc etc. We had proper hot power showers in their offices, rather than the trickling that poor Lisa and Laura got, and we were in the water longer, got closer to the dolphins, and saw more of them. Plus because there was only nine of us swimming, it was much cosier, and we all got to know each other a bit better and chatted to the guides more than if it had been a big boatful. And as cool as the pic I took of Laura jumping off the side of the other boat is, I'm glad we got to climb down ladders at the back instead - jumping two metres into cold water is NOT my idea of a good time. Much nicer to ease yourself in.

Oh. Almost forgot. I met an English girl who was probably about fourteen, she was with her family (though I didn't realise her age until she indicated who she was with, I thought she was just short), and she was from mother hubbarding WINCHESTER. I told her about Lorna's and my adventure in Bessie and how I wanted to go to Winchester to find a pub and stand outside it, doing thumbs up. She didn't seem to totally understand the reference but smiled along gamely.