The Hit List!

The north island was very much about living out of the van, trying to provide for ourselves and be as self sufficient as we could be, whereas in the south you have a lot more activities to draw up a hit list of 'i wants!' First on the list was whale watching in a place called Kaikoura (it means meal of crayfish in Maori - wonder what it is famous for?!) on the east coast (we were doing east coast to the bottom of the south island). We arrived in Kaikoura and got booked on the early morning whale watching trip the following day but not before spotting some seals lazing around on the rocks.....


When morning came we headed down to the shop area in order to be picked up by coach and taken to the boat (we almost missed the bus).

It's lucky we didn't as we headed off and managed to spot three whales!! One or two is the norm, but three is lucky!
The captain of the ship tracks the whales using a hydrophone.......

What makes Kaikoura so special is close to the shore is the 3km deep 'Grand Canyon of the ocean' where the sperm whales are resident. Two strong sea currents converge in this enormous trench and draw up huge quantities of plant and animal nutrients to the surface which provides for a good feed! The giant sperm whales congregate here for that reason and did you know that they are the worlds largest predator and are equivalent in size of four elephants?! They are capable of diving up to 3km for more than two hours in search of their favourite prey - the monstrous giant squid (which does actually exist for those that thought it was an old fishermans tale....)

After diving the whales returned to the surface to catch their breath and stock up on air in order to do it all again. This was when we were able to have a good look at their enormous bodies as we drifted about 50m away and watch them dive back down again. What a sight.

One of them even had a seal for company and Dipi managed to fluke a photo with the seal leaping right out of the water in front of the whale, this was a truely magic experience!! Amazing stuff.

As for the rest of the hit list, see above posts.........