Happy St Patrick's Day everybody!!
It's been strange this year, because I feel like I've celebrated it a day early, although of course I haven't, because it was the 17th here today! We started off the day with a 7.15am check-in for our whale-watching boat trip, the weather was gorgeous, and the sea not as rough as predicted, although a few people did get sick. While we were searching for the whales, we saw a giant Albatross, which was a real bonus. Then we were really lucky, and saw a huge sperm whale who remained on the surface for a good few minutes before he dived, flicking up his tail as he went, and Tony got some really good pictures, including the one at the start of this blog. It was an amazing and quite a surreal experience, with the boat engines off, just drifting along beside such an enormous creature - what a privilege! When that whale disappeared back into the depths of the ocean, (which was incredibly deep where we were, as it's an underwater canyon up to 5,000m deep), we trailed two more, one of which had already dived before we got there, and the second one was just about to, so was gone before we could get outside to take a photo. We then came back into shallower waters, in search of a pod of dolphins, which were much easier to find, as apparently they tend to be in the same place each day, unlike the whales, which could be almost anywhere! There were up to 200 dolphins in the pod, although probably only half that number visible above water at a time, and they kept us entertained for ages, jumping up in the air, slamming back down, doing somersaults, (all team-work, to drive fish into the middle of the pod, but you could have sworn they were doing it for fun!) After that we went to see some fur seals, like the ones that Tony and I saw yesterday, but these were perched really high up on ledges on a huge steep sided rock out at sea, I had no idea that seals could climb like that. All too soon it was time to head back to the jetty, but what a lovely start to the day!
We went to a place called Donegal House for lunch, it was built like an old Irish farmhouse by the ancestors of the present owner, and is now a hotel and restaurant surrounded by beautiful gardens. We thought we would just have a bite to eat and a quiet pint of Guinness, but not long after we arrived, there was a huge invasion of people who had come up from Christchurch by train (it was a work's family fun-day outing) many of them sporting green curly wigs! We didn't have a problem with them, as they were just there to enjoy the day out, but unfortunately the Irish music which had been playing in the bar was turned off and a 'crooner', complete with really loud speakers, set up outside, singing really bad cover versions of old 'middle of the road' type songs! Dreadful! Tony and I moved to the most remote part of the garden, but we could still hear him crooning away, so we got a taxi back to the campsite to get away from it!
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and reading our books. Lovely. We cooked supper and put it out on the picnic tabe outside, I turned my back for a split second to get a fork, and two great big seagulls were up on the table with their heads in my plate!! Then when we sat down to eat, they stood there screeching at us!
Tomorrow we're off to Christchurch, for our last night in our trusty Britz camper van. Goodnight.......