Kaikoura

Kia-Ora Kaikoura = (Hello eat cray fish)

After stuffing our little hobo bellies with as much free toast with peanut butter and jam as we could manage, we jumped aboard the bus to Kaikoura. The journey south along the coast was pretty spectacular, lots of trees and hills with clouds wrapped around them and to our left the beautiful ocean with more sea lions, seaweed and the odd surfer to keep us amused.

We eventually found our hostel “The Lazy Shag” (where I’m writing this at the mo) it’s a lovely new place with clean ensuite rooms and a massive kitchen and bonus free internet.. Lisa foolishly entrusted me with the budget for the next while, so we tried to make our 30 nz dollar food allowance stretch as far as it could, which wasn’t very far at all, and once we saw an Irish pub with an open fireplace it was curtains! I couldn’t resist the lure of Guinness on Draught. We splashed out on a couple of pints each then retreated to the hostel to cook our dinner and drink some red wine and watch another family guy before bed.

Anticipation levels when we awoke this morning were at a high, its Whale Watching Day!! Woohoo.. the reason we decided to visit this town. A km and a half off the coast of Kaikoura, there is an underwater canyon that is over 1000 meters deep. It contains both cold and warm sea currents that are perfect feeding conditions for Dolphins, Giant Squid, Sharks and most importantly… WHALES!!! Its prob the only place in the world you can see whales so close to land. They get whales here all year round Orcas (Killer whales), Humpback, pilot, south right, giant Blue whale and the Sperm whale.

After watching a short video on whales in the whalewatcher centre we set off to the boat (see pics), which was pretty cool and very modern. They had a big screen that constantly displayed details like; where the boat was and how deep the sea below us was. It was manned by a maori whale guy underneath it. It also showed us what speed we were doing. As we shifted over the canyon the depth meter went crazy going from about 30 meters to over 1000 in about 2 minutes. The guy was excellent giving us loads of information about whales and how big the canyon is below us, using some pretty impressive computer graphics and getting our excitement levels pretty high.

After some sonar listening and help from a whale watch plane above a whale had surfaced to breathe about 1km south of us. Full speed ahead skipper lol we charged towards the spray of water from the Sperm whales blowhole in the distance, as once they surface, they breathe for about 5 to 10 minutes before diving to feed for about 40 minutes. Two minutes later the engines were killed and we were floating right beside the whale, so everyone was instructed to get outside fast!! We ran out and there he was - a massive Sperm whale, the second loudest creature on earth (Blue whale is louder, think 747 engines at take off) and the third biggest type of whale.

After about 5 minutes of watching and photographing the giant creature, the guy got on the mic and said
“Ok get ready guys he’s about to dive, here he goes, one last breath and hes going down”.
With one last gust of air from his blowhole he started to submerge and out it came, the moment all the cameras had been waiting for, haha his massive tailfin!! (the guy said it was waving us good bye lol.) Then it was under, leaving only his “footprint” behind - a calm circular area of water on the surface.
Everyone was well happy, the whale guy told us that that whale, was a residential whale, and lives around the sea trench. Its name is Noodle after 2-minute noodles, as that’s all the time he usually stays at the surface. So after that we rushed to another sighting to see another sperm whale, the biggest one feeding in the area and nearly as big as they get. We think his name is Taoi or somink. He gave us a wave goodbye and off we went in search of another, but while waiting on the turd whale to surface, Noodle had resurfaced just a short distance away, so we went back to see him again.

It was a pretty amazing experience seeing a creature so big so close to us. On the way back we went by some sea lion colonies but Lisa and I were not that interested, we had our fair share of sea lions in the Galapagos. (ooh look at us showing off!!) So all that was left to do after that thrilling morning whale watching, was have a pint of Guinness and some ‘Traveller’
Friend’ - Subway for lunch :op