There she blows!!
Current Mood:
Playful
So we leave Christchurch and begin our journey upto the north island. We skip Hanmer Springs and head straight to Kaikoura where we have an appointment with the Whale Watch boat, the journey there was short but as we were on limited time we nailed it… The Whale Watch headquarters was really nice and had plasma screens everywhere showing you short clips of the whales you expected to see. First thing to do was brunch and we tucked into a Panini and a drink, thought about it sensibly when it was locked into our stomachs that it probably wasn’t a good idea, the weather plasma screen showed large sea swells!
The party bus pulled up outside the building and we all jumped aboard, we were being taken to the marina where we would board the boat but first had to sit through some more of the videos etc that had been produced for the whale watch company. My suspicions of the company being extremely well off was further upped by the fact they had paid National Geographic to come and make a documentary on the canyon, showing what would happen if you took all the water out and what fish live down there.
 The boat was really well equipped and had plasma screens and computers aboard ready for them to show you the names of the whales we saw. We were straight out to a reported sighting though, engines working overtime to get us there before she dove. I don’t think I was really ready for how big they actually are, we pulled up alongside her in the boat and she was easily the length of it – around 16 – 18 metres in length and one of the biggest they see around. My camera clicked like crazy when the tail came up out the water and with one sweep, she was gone – going down to the 1500metre depth that they often feed at! Scary thought really when you are sitting in a large swell above this abyss…
Lucy and Sarah felt a little sea sick, but managed to stay just above the hurl threshold, someone on the boat didn’t though as the inside stunk all of a sudden and I was quite happy to take my chances standing on the outside of the boat as we flew towards the next sighting (not allowed to get up while the boat is in motion though – how sucky is that). Everytime I saw these whales though, I was amazed, really gob smacked, thinking that the giant head you can see in the water in front of you is going to dive down under millions of tons of water just to catch a few fish – taking around 45 mins to get down there, have a swim around and get back, they can’t even see down there! Crazy…
All in all though, I loved it, such an amazing experience and one I would definately suggest to people visiting the South island. Next stop Picton and the crossing to the North Island.
