Kaikoura is a small village. They suffered through the biggest earthquake recorded in New Zealand in November 2016. That’s just before the peak vacation season and, as you might guess, they depend on fishing and tourism to live. Nevertheless, they survived with what seems like limited impact. A couple of businesses are closed, but the vast majority is up and running. (don’t forget summer here is January to April, so they had one summer before this one)
Our day started with laundry. We have to do that pretty much every other day, at a maximum after four days. This gave us the chance to take it easy for a while, make ourselves breakfast (our hotel has breakfast included but it’s essentially an open kitchen, you want eggs you make them yourself and do your dishes). It felt a bit like a lazy Sunday back at home but in January at +22°C
The activity today was whale watching. Now it’s not your typical sit in the boat shut up and wait for us to tell you where we the spotter sees whale. They use catamarans that can go about 25 knots (about 50 kph). It may not feel fast, but on a swelling sea, it’s enough for the boat to get airborne a couple of time. The type of whales that hang around Kaikoura are mostly sperm whales. These whales dive for around 45 minutes at a time. So our boat went from whale spot to whale spot as they were surfacing. In between whales, they stop to let us meet dolphins and a group of seals. Throughout the tour, they’ll give information on what to expect, how to spot the different sea animals we’re likely to encounter and provide context on the life of these animals. There was a lot of continuous education going on while we were whale watching.
Karine managed 542 pictures. Not sure yet how many of those are of blurred smudges underwater. I kept focused on panoramas so ended with a very manageable 26 :-), again loosing the battle. Still, beautiful weather and time at sea makes for gorgeous pictures.
