Arriving in Kaikoura, this place has a main strip with restaurants, cafes and tourist shops and we found an increased number of tourists, especially backpackers, roaming the street. Definitely a popular tourist destination. We had to drive around a bit and check out the area before we were able to check in to our motel. We drove as far as we could to the tip of the town and found a nice plateau leading into the ocean. There were fur seals lying about 20m from the car park and you could wander onto the rocks right up to the egde of the ocean.
A local's catch of the day.
The beach behind our motel:
Lunch was at a local cafe that is apparently a popular breakfast spot for the locals, we had the chowder and a beef & bacon burger.
One of the expected highlights of the trip was the whale watching excursion, an we were not disappointed. The most abundant whale species around here are the sperm whales, but only males as the waters are too cold for the smaller, less blubbery females. There is a huge underwater canyon here and the whales dive town into it to feed. The area we went to was over 1km deep and the whales typically stay down there for almost an hour before coming up to breathe for around 10 minutes. So the boats need to time it right, otherwise they miss the whales. Typically you see an average of 1-2 whales per trip. Today we saw two, though we arrived at the second one just as he was preparing to dive again, so those who were late to deck missed the dive.
When they are on the surface they basically just float and breathe, getting rid of the carbon dioxide in their body and replenishing it with oxygen. Then we they are ready to go back down they do a couple of stretches, then arch their backs and dive head down, tail up. This is of course the money shot for photographers, and can really only be topped by a breaching shot. But sperm whales don't usually do this, the humpbacks are more known for jumping out of the water like this.
I got some nice shots of the tails, below are some of the first whale.
On the way back we came across several pods of dusky dolphins, they had little ones with them and several were having some fun jumping out of the water.
On the way back the crew guide mentioned Blackfish, the documentary about orcas in captivity, specifically one orca called Tilikum. This lead to a pretty passionate anti-whaling message. Throughout the trip there was information about whales and wildlife, though some people on the boat had to concentrate more on trying not to throw up. Even Simone changed to a disturbing colour but we arrived out at the whale grounds just in time.
Tomorrow it's a roughly 3h drive to Nelson for our last couple of days on the south island.
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