South Island Day 16 – Kaikoura Whale Watching & Dolphins

We drove down the east coast to Kaikoura for the last event of the trip.. A Whale Watch tour which we booked before we left..

My hopes weren’t too high, as I didn’t know too much about the area, though they had a web site that showed stats for what was spotted each day – and they looked like pretty good odds.

We loaded into a pretty powerful boat, with a glassed in interior, and viewing decks outside. When the boat loaded, people rushed the gates, and it turned out that Mish and I had to sit apart inside.. That kinda sucked, but it turned out that we were only inside in-between sightings – and there were to be many of them!

I think within the first half hour, we had our first sighting. The boat launched into high gear, and flew across the ocean to where the whale was.. Then they opened the doors, and we rushed out to get a glimpse of my first Sperm whale.. Here is a pic of him diving..

The next time we got a sighting, I took a short flick to give you an idea of the boat racing.. I missed a couple of the big jumps we made over the waves, but this gives you a bit of the idea..

 

 
 

And here is the second Sperm whale diving..

While I took the still photo, Michelle videotaped it with the other camera (yes, we each had our own cameras for this tour!) :

 
 

Here is a pic which gives you a bit of the feel for how huge Sperm whales are.. Just massive bodies swimming in the ocean…

This pic gives you a view to their blubber.. The insulation that allows them to dive for about an hour in the freezing depths..

After about 4 sightings of 3 Sperm whales (the last sighting was the same whale as the first sighting – after he had come back to the surface from his dive which lasted over an hour) we started heading back..

But then they spotted a huge pack of dusky dolphins – 400 or so apparently (we could see about 100, and they say for every 1 you can see, there are 3 under the surface)..

Here is one pic showing one of these little dudes launching up..

They were very ‘playful’.. You could see them jumping and doing flips in the air all over the place.. There were so many of them, I got the feeling I could walk across them to the shore…

Note that the flips aren’t actually them ‘playing’, but actually hunting.. They apparently hunt in packs, and while one guy goes up and splashes the surface, the others wait down below to feed on the fish that got scared down..

It was quite an amazing feeling to see these creatures.. All in the wild, in their natural habitat..

I just caught the landing of the flip in this one.. Notice the amazing background even.. It was a beautiful day, with wicked scenery..

Another group shot..

Sorry for the camera work on this one.. but a couple good flips caught here..

 
 

The number of dolphins was just amazing.. It really put the little pack of dolphins we had seen in Milford Sound to shame!  (If you haven’t seen it, you can check out all the other days of our honeymoon in the drop down above (click on the name of the slate in the white text box next to my profile pic)

After the tour was over, we grabbed some souvenirs for the nieces, and planned out our flights home for a bit.

We also hit a Fudge factory where the guy makes tons of flavours… He just came back from vacation in the north island.  The fudge was great, and he was very friendly.. Just a little shop down the street from the whale watch. Funny how the locals think a trip to the other New Zealand island is a vacation!  We met a few like that.. And Australians who had never been to New Zealand.. crazy!

Once we were all sorted out, we headed for Christchurch, which was a much bigger city then we’d seen in a while..  We camped there for the night, ready to head back to the North Island tomorrow..