So far no call from the dolphin encounter, they have trips at 5.30am, 8.30am and 12.30 am so was kinda glad they didn’t call me for the 5.30 or even the 8.30 to be honest.
Instead I headed off along the bay to visit the Fyffe House which was once a very prominent whaling residence in the area and even has whale vertebra for its foundations! It was built around 1860 which is old here! It was interesting to see how life used to be not actually that long ago by English standards. It was good to see but also good to see that now the whale industry is built around taking tourists out on boats to marvel at the magic of it all rather than harpooning them for their oil and blubber.
The Fyffe House
My plan was to next walk around the peninsula visiting the fur seal colon
y on the way when I got the call from the Dolphin Encounter saying they had had a cancellation on the next trip at 12.30 so off I headed to collect all my gear. I took a sandwich with me not forgetting to also take the underwater case for the camera as well as snorkel and mask. The Dolphin Encounter is the only company operating this trip out of Kaikoura which was surprising; I’m kinda thinking there’s a bit of a business opportunity there! :-)
A very peaceful Fur Seal
We all got kitted out and headed off to the boat, they had warned us that there was a bit of a swell out to sea and therefore a risk of sea sickness so to take tablets in readiness. Once on board and about 10 metres out to sea several faces turned green, which probably wasn’t helped by me tucking into my lunch of sandwich and crisps! By the end of the trip over half of the people onboard were sick, I think though to be honest it was more of a knock on effect cause it really wasn’t rough out there, cold yes, but not particularly rough.
After about 40 mins of heading along the coast we came across the dolphins, there were hundreds of them, they estimate that there was probably around 400 – 500 of them. The dolphins we were swimming with were Dusky dolphins and quite small by Bottlenose standards, and super super cute. The aim of the game appears to be for the boat to get up in front on the dolphins direction of travel and for us all to jump in and see what happens as they pass us by, then we jump back on board again and head off to get in front of them again. It wasn’t too cold to start with but as soon as you’ve got in and out a few times it soon turns cold, in fact it soon turned freezing cold! Although probably not quite as cold as you’re getting it back home huh?!
The dolphins, if they want to be, are really playful and if you catch their eye they really interact with you, testing how good you are with a snorkel by swimming in circles around you seeing if you can keep up. They swam so close to us it was incredible and as our guide kept telling us they are totally wild creatures. Really? No kidding!
A really fantastic experience and although we were in their habitat, on their ground as it were they really didn’t seem to mind us being there, they actually seemed to enjoy it.
Afterwards it was straight back to the hostel for a long hot shower and a warm up and to try and make a bit of a plan for tomorrow.
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