Kaikora

On Whale Watch!!!

Kaikora was only 2 and a half hours up the coast from Christchurch. It's a small (basically one road) town, set along the coast. It's a quiet but scenically enchanting place and a popular location for tourists due to the large number of accessible sealife (specifically whales and dolphins) which everyone comes to watch or even swim with here. Over the 7 months traveling, I have seen and swam with a huge variety of wild creatures and many of them were water based, but of all the things to do - swiming with dolphins was one of the top things for my friend Darren (he loves his animals) and so I decided that I would come along for the swimming ride.

Unfortunately, we only had one full day to swim with the dolphins and on that day our trip was cancelled. Aparently this happens a lot. If you don't have the right weather conditions or the dolphins are not up for messing around in the waters that day then the trips get postponed. We had been speaking to many people who had stayed in Kaikora for days for the chance to swim with these watery mammals but kept having their trip postponed. One thing you learn when you travel and seeing many wild creatures - is that you just can't rely on them. Equally you can't rely on mother nature either and so when you have the two to rely on - your chances are low - especially if you only have one day to do it. I promised Darren that he would get his swim with a dolphin before he leaves NZ - there are plenty more places to do it - and hopefully it would be in summer, when the waters would be warmer.

Instead, on our (now) free day, we took a long walk up to the Seal colony. It was a great (and long) walk but the seals were all there waiting for us. Most growled at Darren for attempting to get too close - he really does love his animals.

After a couple of relaxed days, we departed Kaikora (Kai = food and kora = crayfish in Maori - they eat lots of crayfish here) and finally left the South Island. It has been a great experience. Certainly the scenery on this half of the country is far more appealing and there are so many things to see and do down here. The variety of locations is just phenomenal. However it was time to head back to the smoking, volcano rich North Island. Life was good - when your heading to Taupo - and you want to be a volcanologist.........