Having a whale of a time!
24th July 2006
We have now moved onto the South Island for the final 3 1/2 weeks of our adventure in New Zealand. I would love to say our passage to the South was smooth…..however, we were unlucky enough to feel the strength of a ‘strong southerly’ during our ferry crossing of the cook straight from Wellington to Picton.
It just goes to show, you can spend all the dollars you want on white knuckle activities, but nothing can come close to the power of Mother Nature when she lets rip! The ferry crossing was infinitely more scary than our sky dive earlier in the week! We encountered 7m swells out in the straight, that litterally picked our boat up and threw it about for fun.
The ‘highlight’ of the crossing was definitley the point when the boat listed massively to one side, so that all that could be seen out of one set of windows was the angry ocean, and out of the other, the dark stormy sky. At this point all the furniture went skidding down the boat leaving everyone flat on their ass! After this the crew advised us that we would be better off sitting on the floor for the time being, and all around people were making good use of the motion sickness bags (not us though!). I really thought this was the end of our adventure, the local girls we were sat with doing nothing to ease our concern, as they made rushed mobile calls to their familes to tell them they were about to die!
Still, we survived and made it to the other side 1 hour over the usual journey time. When we landed in Picton, some locals told us that a few weeks previously, a ship got caught for 8 hours in 12m swells, which caused chaos as all the cars and freight had broken loose on the cargo deck, so we were clearly just being soft English tourists!
Our first destination on the south island was Kaikora on the East coast. This place has the fortune to have a fault line just off the coast which means the ocean drops to over a mile deep just a short distance out. As a result of the resulting marine is amazing and it is one of the best places in the world to go whale watching. We waited a day or so for the right weather (taking in a winery tour and the all blacks game down the pub!), and headed out on the 7.15am (ouch!) boat with a dozen or so others. Within half an hour of being out at sea, the crew, armed with listening equipment, were hearing whales. They guided us in, and over the next couple of hours we got to see a humpback whale, and 2 sperm whales close up as they surfaced for air and lazed about in the morning sunshine. The best bit by far was when the sperm whales dived back down to the depths, giving us a great view of their huge tails that propell them down and back out of sight.
The other thing worth mentioning on the ship was the amount of people throwing up. The seas were much calmer than during our ferry trip, however, the boat was much smaller and as a result got thrown round just as much. Those falling fowl of the motion sickness included one of us two, mentioning no names (although I’ll give you a clue, it wasn’t the person writing this blog!).
After visiting a couple of seal colonies, we left Kaikoura in the evening and headed back up North, before cutting across the island and heading down the west coast. We plan to spend the next 10 days or so heading down the west coast to the bottom of the island before coming back up to Christchurch.
We overnighted at Westport, before visiting the mining museum in the morning to learn about the origins of settlers in the area. We later passed down the coast to Punakaiki (pancake shaped rocks!) and Greymouth (aptly named) and are now currently resting up for the night in Hokikoki (near enough!) before we head further South to take in some Glaciers!
Tags: Kaikoura, New Zealand, NZ, Whales
Chris and Charl
Really great to speak to you last night. You sounded SO HAPPY.
The ferry crossing sounded very scary… no doubt a contributing factor to your deciding to fly back to Auckland!
Yet more fantastic pics for us to see..the whales and the seals..you have taken loads!
Looking forward to pics of the glaciers.
Lots and lots of love to you both
Mumxxx
Great to speak to you too! Will try not to leave it so long next time!