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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Back into your seats please, we have a whale dead ahead!” |
(Check out the more photos options for more pix of whales, seals, and birds in action!)
The start of my Stray journey started off slowly, but pleasantly. The bus only had about 12 people on board, so we had plenty of space to relax. A few of the people on-board would be traveling with me all the way around the island, and they seemed like very good people. There was an Irish guy (Stephen), a few Brits (Liz, Lizzie & Chris), and a Swiss girl (Lucia) that were on essentially the same plan as myself. Stephen and I talked a fair bit on the way to Kaikoura, while the others I didn't really get to know until I got to Kaikoura.
The drive was very rainy and cloudy in the am, which was a real shame for the second part of the trip. The first part is mostly agricultural area, but the latter portion was a beautiful drive alongside the coast, which switch-back roads and tons of rocky outcrops and beaches. This area is often where sightings of the Hector dolphins (native only? to NZ) occur, but the weather must have kept them from coming to shore. The surf here is quite impeccable, not necessarily for surfing, but because it seems like there is a continuous break in single spots on the shoreline. Quite a cool phenomenon.
The main activity in Kaikoura is whale watching, but we were quite concerned about not being able to go with weather like we had. Fortunately, much of the weather over the sea cleared up, and we were able to go. Unfortunately, the coast was still shrowded by cloud, so we couldn't see the signature snow-capped mountains that circled the shoreline.
We went out in a boat, which would circle the area and the crew would use a hydrophone to listen for whale noises here and there along the way. We would all go out onto the deck to look around, and when they had a sighting or heard one, we would all have to scramble back into the main seating area to rush over to the whale. Was a little chaotic, but it worked!
The whales were really amazing. They come up for air for only about 10 mins at a time, and then can dive for up to 45 mins, so it is never a given to see any on the trip. Usually they see 1 or 2, but we ended up seeing 3 on the surface, and just missed one more! They just sit on the top of the water getting air and blowing water out their blowholes, and then do a very graceful dive to go back down. They don't dive quickly, so when you see their backs arch, there is a fair bit of warning to get ready for the infamous whale tail photos...
We also got to see a ton of albatrosses flying around, since they liked to follow the boat around. But probably the most cool thing we saw in the day (other than the whales!) was a seal that was eating a squid on the surface. The birds kept trying to steal it from him, so he was using the squid as a weapon, swinging it at the birds to fend them off! Very cool... We had seen quite a number of seals at a colony earlier in the day, but they were just sitting there idly, so this was a great action sequence!
There was also a cool natural shelf under the sea on the way out to see the whales. When we left the port, the first few kms only had a depth of ~100m, but then suddenly we hit the ledge, and it dropped off almost instanly to ~ 1600m (1 mile) deep! They had a little screen that showed our position and the depth, and an indicator of the depth in more relative terms - the # of Auckland SkyTowers, Chrysler buildings, etc... Quite a cool display...
After the tour, we went back to the hotel where we were staying, and watched a few movies, and then went to watch rugby at the pub next door with the gang. It was a great way to get to know my bus-mates a little better, since I would be seeing them a lot in the next couple of weeks!
The next morning we got up to drive up to Picton, and it turned out that the weather had somewhat broken from the day before. Finally got a decent chance to see the Kaikoura snow-caps that we missed the day before. Quite a beautiful sight, that I wish we could have seen from the boat the day before!
previous travel blog entry
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