Day 111-112

On the 17th July we had our trip to Kaikoura which took a bit longer than we thought. However, the views on the way gave us our first real glimpse of snow capped mountains and black sandy beaches.

Once at Kaikoura we went for a walk to the seal colony at Point Keam, we managed to get a couple of metres away from a large male. We also saw what we thought was a baby but we later found out it was a female as they are much smaller. We then took the 'Clifftop Trail' around the peninsula, not far from here is where one of the only places where the Albatross will nest on land, we then went past Whaler's Bay, which was an old lookout for the whale trade, past another seal colony, then through South Bay, back over the hill to the other side of the peninsula.

On the 18th July we had booked a Whale Watching tour that we were really excited about. Yesterday had been quite overcast and we were fortunate to get much better weather. This also gave us the opportunity to appreciate the view from our hostel window of the mountains.

Once aboard the boat we took a 15 minute journey out to where the continental shelf drops 2 miles. This is the haven for whales as they are such deep feeders and this is where we saw our first Sperm Whale. It was a really exciting experience and we were taken aback by its size even though we only saw a 1/6 of it's body. We managed to get some photo's despite the choppy water and big swell.

Once our first whale had dived down it wouldn't surface again for 40-60 minutes so we moved on and quickly found another 3 Sperm Whales in total, along with some Hector's Dolphin's at the end of our trip. Hector's Dolphin's are the smallest and rarest dolphin's which are known for being acrobats, unfortunately we didn't see any acrobatics but we did see them jump out of the water. They were very quick which made it difficult for us to gather photo's.

Some of the facts we learnt about the Sperm Whale are;

• The blow hole is angled at 45 degrees unlike the Orca and Blue whales which are angled at 90 degrees.
• Male Sperm Whales are commonly around 18-20 metres in length which is about the same size as a Boeing 747.
• There heart is the same size as a Volkswagen Beetle.
• They are the largest toothed whale on earth and there teeth are 30cm in length.
• The deepest depth ever known to dive is 834 metres and they can hold there breath upto 2 1/2 hours.
• They eat about a tonne of food a day which is equivilant to what a human eats in a year.

On the way back like many of the other passengers Lorna got a wee bit seasick (but she never gets seasick) and Al was stuck between Lorna and another passenger throwing up into paper bags....nice!

After Lorna's stomach had settled we went for fish and chips before getting on our coach to Christchurch.