So after the adventures of Chris' birthday we left Christcurch in our hire car, the trusty Nissan Bluebird, in search of whales and dolphins! About 2 hours north of Christchurch is a peninsula called Kaikoura where they have an adundance of sea life not far from the coast. This is due to there being massive canyons under the sea which reach a depth of 1600 metres at the deepest point, which is full of nutrients and grub! Even the elusive giant squid are caught off the coast of Kaikoura! Due to the depth, all year round they have whales that come here to shelter from the sea, this time of year is the season of the Giant Sperm whale, but at other times they have Humpback whales, Killer whales, and even different types of sharks including the Great White! On top of all that, there are hundreds of dusky dolphins and fur seals that can be found all year round. And that concludes our little lecture!!!

Anyway back at the ranch, at Kaikoura....upon arriving we decided to drive down to the furthermost tip of the pensinsula called Keane point where they have fur seals up on the coast and you can get up to 5/10m away from them. There were literally hundreds of them out on the rocks about 100m out to sea, and quite a few right near the edge of the car park! It was like nothing else we've seen, it was great! Did u know that seals come up on land too and rest in the bushes? We didn't know that, until we were looking at this info sign explaining about the seals, and we heard this sneeze, as we turned away there's only little old sammy the seal snoozing in the bush! We were stood pretty much right next to it! He probably wasn't too impressed with us interuppting his sleep! Whoops sorry Sammy!

So the next day we're off our on our little tour, but not before trying some fresh crayfish and garlic mussels at the BBQ stand not far from the roads edge. It was an experience that's for sure, especially for Chris who doesn't really eat fish?! So after smelling of fish and garlic we headed off on the boat, tryting to keep a safe distance from everyone else! After travelling a little way out to sea we had our first encounter with noodle the sperm whale, they named it - not us!!!! Apparently this is a whale they see a lot of, surfacing for 2 minutes (hence the name noodle, after the 2 minute noodles!!) before diving again for anything up to an hour! These sperm whales are absolutely huge, and to hear them blowing the air out of their hole was just mental!! It's like we were on a documnentary or something (minus the monotone narration!) While noodle was on his dive, the boat took us off to see the huge amounts of dusky dolphins, one of the smallest species of dolphin of the lot! There were again hundreds of them around the boat and off in the distance. They were all jumping out of the water doing somersualts and flips, jumping around the boats, it was really cool. This trip has made up for all the other dolphin trips we've both been on and come back seeing nothing but sea birds!!!

It wasn't long, well it didnt' seem like long till we were off in search of noodle with a whale trackin device, well kind of! It looked more like a metal detector to us!! It was one of those things they put under water which picks up the clicking of the whale as they are scanning the sea bed readying themselves to surface - can't u tell we learnt a lot on this trip too! This time we saw him actaully surface and saw him for the whole 2 minutes before he went down, after this we saw him one more time before we had to head back. We also saw on the trip more fur seals out to sea, and also a wondering albatross, which apparently is quite rare to see??

This trip really was a once in a lifetime thing, well for us anyway, it's gone to the top of out fav things we've done since we've been away... well joint with another activity we've done in the last week, but we can't tell you about that yet???? It's just not the time!!!