Having a whale of a time
Trip Start
Jul 27, 2004
1
5
42
Trip End
Dec 21, 2004
Kaikoura,
New Zealand
Saturday, August 7, 2004
Had a brilliant day whale watching in the Pacific Ocean off Kaikoura in the South Island. Booked into a lovely little motel overlooking the ocean called The White Morph, proper motel just like you see on the telly. Room v.warm & snug with a big TV.
South Island is a bit colder than the north but other than that no major differences as yet - off to glacier land tomorrow so expecting big differences then. Bought some gloves yesterday which was a wise investment.
Drive down here took about 2 1/2 hours, longer than expected because - get this - South Highway 1 the main motorway was blocked by a mud slide (see photo)
Bob the builder
. We got off lightly with a 1/2 hour wait, those unlucky people who got caught up in it last night were stuck for 7 hours!! Wait for clearance passed quickly as there were lots of big CAT diggers & dumpers to watch, also had the blue Pacific & black sand to look at.Kaikoura is a sleepy little village (takes 10 minutes to walk through the whole thing) that revolves around the marine wildlife. Loads of trips to watch or swim with dolphins & seals and of course the whales - this time of year mainly sperm whales.
The trip we did was organised by whale watch who are based in the whaleway station (how funny is that ??)It was a bit of a nightmare when we checked in as there were signs up everywhere saying that the sea was rough and that sea sickness was probable! We necked a double dose of sea sickness tablets and luckily did not join the vomiters. We set off in a really posh cataraman thing which was like a massive speedboat and the captain listened for whales using an underwater microphone thing, it was very clever and within the first 10 minutes we were watching our first sperm whale. They are amazingly massive yet when they dive manage to be quite graceful and the tail quite impressive when it flips. All together we saw 4 whales all with the beautiful backdrop of the snow capped Kaikoura mountain range.
