PART ONE: DUNEDIN TO KAIKOURA
Emily -Stalker of all wild things.
Kristin’s friend, Mike, flew in from Minneapolis and we started our travels almost immediately!! The first thing we did was head out to Sandfly Bay to try for a glimpse of Hooker’s sea lions, New Zealand fur seals, and the elusive, adorable yellow-eyed penguin. We certainly saw all three!! The sea lions were really active and super close.
The extremely rare yellow-eyed penguin.
The only bugger about Sandfly bay is the MASSIVE sand hill you have to go up at the end of the trip. Down…Down is FUN. I’ll post a video of that as soon as I have a copy.
We left the next day for Kaikoura with the car packed to the gills with all the “essentials”, including camping gear (which we never used) and heaps of food (which we ate just about all of). The initial plan was to be as frugal as possible while still dropping hundreds of dollars on touristy stuff. Kristin had carefully researched cheap backpackers/hostels to stay in. They usually run about $25/night for a bed in a quad room. Not too bad, although we certainly experienced a vast difference in quality and value for that price! One place gave us our own (spotless bathroom) and an in-room TV for $25, while another gave us sketchy beds with lumpy pillows sharing a room with a sickly German hiker and disgusting piss-smelling bathrooms accompanied by hair-clogged, flooded showers….Like I said. Quite a variety. Anyways….onward.
We arrived in Kaikoura after an 8hr drive north out of Dunedin, stopping a handful of times to see some sights, including Moeraki Boulders (my 3rd time, Kristin’s 6th) and baby fur seals playing on some rocks. For the record, fur seals are about 50X more attractive than sea lions. See photos for comparison.
Exhibit A: Adorable baby New Zealand fur seal.
Exhibit B: Grouchy Hooker's sea lion
We met Jess at our first hostel: The Lazy Shag (a perfectly respectable place). There we chatted for over an hour with a very hilarious and colorful British girl named Emma. Emma was disenchanted with British men, and having dated an American guy, was convinced that living in the suburbs in a big house was a fabulous way to go. She also applauded the way that “women have total control” over men in the US and queried us as to why American men are circumcised while explaining how shocked she’d been to discover that fact the hands-on way. It was an interesting chat, to say the least.
The next morning we headed to Kaikoura Dolphin Encounters. Here, we were outfitted with wetsuits, flippers, snorkels, masks, and stripped of $165.00 before being herded onto a bus and then a boat and then launched out onto a choppy sea. I knew ahead of time that sea sickness could pose a threat to my dolphin enjoyment, so I took some motion sickness pills and just went with the flow. Once the dusky dolphins were spotted, we stopped and just jumped right into the ocean. I thought I’d be nervous…Literally we were set adrift in the ocean, thousands of feet deep, surrounded by fast swimming sea creatures. Luckily, the dolphins were friendly and curious and playful. They were also adorable and only about as long as I am tall. They’re Dusky Dolphins. In order to swim with them, you just swim along the surface of the water with your snorkel up and watch them. You can interact with them too. They LOVE if you spin in circles and they’ll circle you over and over again until you can’t keep up. They also like if you dive down with them…although I rapidly realized that was a good way to accidentally ingest salt water.
Jess and I suited up (minus the flippers) to go swimming with dolphins. Wetsuits make one painfully aware of one's own figure...or lack thereof.
The dolphins were so much fun. I wanted to stay in forever. Unfortunately, my body got the better of me. I started feeling really ill. Apparently the combination of bobbing in the water and swallowing salt water makes one even MORE sea sick than the boat….I was the 2nd person to come crawling, green-faced, out of the fun and I took up residence on deck with a bucket…Although many people became sea sick, I was the only one to truly “feed the fish”…I’m sure the dolphins appreciated my luring the fish in. Optimism. Mike also got sick, though he thought it was from swallowing too much sea water. I was the star puker on this trip. The bad part was that it basically immobilized me for most of the ride. After feeding the fish three times, though, I felt better and hobbled my way to the front of the ship to watch the dolphins playing in front of our boat!
Kristin took this awesome shot of a pair of duskies.
My shot of the duskies right in front of the boat.
Airborne dusky dolphin.
They’re so cool. Kristin got a video of them doing flips!! Check out http://kristininnewzealand.blogspot.com/2010/05/dolphin-swimming.html for some entertaining dolphin footage!
That concludes Part One. Part Two still to come: Picton and Queen Charlotte.
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