Nature Watch

Kaikoura
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We drove for 7 hours from the West Coast of New Zealand over to the East Coast just 1 and half hours drive above Christchurch where we had to drop the car off in a few days before flying to Brisbane, Australia.

The place we have stopped at is called Kaikoura and is a big old bay with a mountain range which towers over it before dropping into the sea.  It is very, very scenic.

Whales n Stuff

The mountains end and below the water a massive valley starts, dropping from 90 feet around the bay to 800 feet.  All the dead fish drop to the bottom releasing nutrients into the water which attracts Hector, dusky and bottle-nosed dolphins, Orca, Southern-right,sperm and hump-back whales amongst others and penguins and seals, albatroses.

In Kaikoura the excitement never ends
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Basically coming from Liverpool where the most wildlife i will see is cats, dogs and the odd hamster i found Kaikoura pretty impressive.

The place is like a fishing village/seaside resort without the naff arcades and the chips in cones.  After a few days with not much money to spend we wanted naff arcades and chips in cones.

You can pay to swim with dolphins, see whales on a boat (you not the whales), see/swim with seals and you can also pay to fly over the whales/sea life on 30 minute trips.  Being skint we decided to go for walks and play crazy golf.

Seals Or Maybe Sealion-type things
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One of the walks was a 4 hour walk along the cliffs around Kaikoura here you could see the exotic creatures known as "sheep" or "Cows"..wow.  After an hour or so of going up and down hills we saw a seal colony basking on some rocks.

We took some photos from miles away as we had read we cannot go within 10 metres of them as they will kick off and flipper your face in. So we kept our distance.

2 hours and a wrong turn through some farmers dung-laden field later we had come to the end of the walk and walked back down the cliff where Ruth noticed a bloke staring at a "statue" in the car park.  As we approached we saw the statue move..it was in fact a big fat fur seal... I thought this was cool so headed towards it until i nearly stood on a sleeping 5 foot fur seal which was on the grass in front of me.

More Sealions
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Looking around there were loads of them all lying about and none were attacking me which was nice of them.  I asked Ruth if we could keep one and put it in the bath but apparently it's not practical...

The evening was nice, we had been told we were lucky as the hotel had a room with a balcony left.  What the owner didn't explain was it was shared with about 5 other rooms.  The residents of two of these rooms decided to roll up pissed out of their minds at 12:30 and shout to each other even though they were a foot away from each other.

Kaikoura
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The conversation was a mixture of "fuck", "ay mate" and "arr yeeah" ..."Ar yeeah" was mostly used when one of the other said "fuck" or "ay mate"..This was repeated for 30 minutes before i started to go insane.  I got up opened the door and told them to keep it down as we were trying to sleep...if they didn't mind awfully.  Surprisingly they didn't stab me to death and quietened down for a full 30 minutes before it started again for an hour.  We went to sleep with ear-plugs in and with dreams of kung fu kicking 2 drunken australians of balconies.

Lord Of The Rings Country
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The day after we had nothing to do, besides kicking random adjoining room doors and running away in the hope of waking hungover people.  We didn't have the funds to go whale watching so we walked around killing time via crazy golf.

In the shops on the way back Ruth overheard a shop assistant ask another if she had "seen the whale".  Deciding that it wasn't in fact an insult towards one of us we walked over to the tourist info where i asked if we could see a whale without going on an organised tour.

A cow, a really pretty one though!
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The woman replied that it was funny i asked because it hadn't happened in her lifetime but there were two southern-right whales about 100 foot away from the beach 50 metres to our right.  So that's twice in New Zealand i have been really lucky.

"I can't wait to get a few shots of this" i thought, turning my camera on but the devil had once again pissed in my cornflakes as the camera told me it had no battery power.  I had to run to the hotel, power the camera up for 10 minutes and then run back.

Head Of Southern Right Whale
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This got me 10 identical pictures of whales tails going in the water and one head shot.  Again the camera turned itself off and just as it did the fucking whales started leaping in and out of the water.

See whales are intelligent and they somehow know when the battery of my camera is on it's arse...and they are intelligent enough to take the piss.  I threw a few stones at them and went home.