Moving North

Further up the East Coast from Christchurch lies Kaikoura, renowned for whale watching. There is a sudden drop in the shelf off the coast, which means they don’t have to go far from the coast to see plenty of whales. We booked onto a boat trip and set off with cameras in hand. Each time we were moving in the boat they explained a bit more about the whales to us, with the help of a screen at the front of the boat.

We were in luck for the trip, it was a calm sunny day, and they had been tracking two sperm whales all day. We rushed straight out to where one had just come up for air. It was strange to see one sperm whale sitting at the surface of the water, with two boat loads of tourists around it and two tourist planes flying overhead. The sperm whales usually spend about 10 years in this area so I assume they’re quite used to all the fuss at this stage! This one was called Little Nick, due to a distinctive nick in his tail. We watched dutifully, seeing only a tiny fraction of the bulk of the whale above the water, until the exciting finale when he dived, showing us his tail. They usually dive for about 40 minutes to feed before coming back up for air again, so we set off to find the other whale they were tracking that day, Tiaki. We got two separate views of Tiaki, of a similar nature to that watching Little Nick. Here's a picture of sperm whales showing how much we see above the water and how much more there is below:

While Tiaki was feeding between our views of him, we also saw a lone Wandering Albatross sitting minding his own business floating on the sea, and a school of Dusky Dolphins. There were an estimated three or four hundred dolphins in the school, and they leapt and played just as you’d expect from Dolphins. I hadn’t realised there would be so many in one school and it was amazing to see. I really enjoyed the trip, though I would love to have been able to go underwater and see just how big the whales were as we really could see so little of them from the boat, and what we could see was still immense!

We then went back to visit Marie and Ross in Nelson again as promised, and had a few nice relaxing days with them, including making a trip to the “centre” of New Zealand, strangely located on the top of a hill overlooking Nelson. I’m sure it was close enough to the centre!

Finally, it was time to say farewell to the South Island for a while, and we hopped on the ferry on April Fools Day.