Emma picked us up from the airport in Christchurch and we headed straight away for Kaikoura. I had passed through there on the train down from Picton to Christchurch the week before so I knew we were going whale watching. But Jo and Will had no idea where we were going at all. We arrived at the youth hostel in the dark, after driving around the town a few times for good measure (we got a bit lost!), so they still had no idea until we got up the next morning. It was quite hard keeping my mouth shut because Emma wanted it to be a surprise, but I did manage it.
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The coast line on this part of the south island is amazing. You are practically
either in the sea or halfway up a mountain, there is not much land in-between in some
spots. This photo is of Jo and Emma walking along the pebble beach to the whale watching place. Unfortunately it was difficult to take good photos here because the contrast was so dramatic, but you get the idea. |
| Here is my attempt at whale photography! I was severely hampered by my camera. I know, a bad workman always blames his tools, but in this case it really wasn't my fault - I haven't got a zoom on my camera. |  |
| We saw 5 whales on this trip, which wasn't bad going at all. It took ages to find the first one and I was beginning to think that it would be just our luck that we wouldn't see any. Even though it doesn't look it from these pictures there was enough of a swell to make a significant number of passengers sea sick. The boat crew were amazingly good at spotting the ones who were about to puke and whisking them off to the back of the boat where they could vomit in peace and not induce a boat-wide vom-fest! One poor bloke managed to hold it until we got back to the visitors centre and then had to make a run for the toilet. None of the four of us were sick and I think we were all rather pleased with ourselves (well, I was anyway!). | |
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Jo took this photo. As you can see, her camera is a lot better than mine (well its not that hard - I bought mine second-hand 5 years ago for $35. Its got a flash and that is about it!) |
[back to Sydney] [onwards to St Arnaud]
