Kiakoura

After a long 12 hour journey practically travelling from one end of the south island to the other, we arrived in the small town of Kiakoura. We got taken straight to our hostel and settled into our home for the next few days. We had an early night as we had a busy few days ahead.

The next morning we got up around 10am and cooked ourselves a bacon sandwich. We then walked down the road to a place called the Dolphin Encounter, we then boarded a boat and headed out to see if we could find some dusky dolphins. After around an hour of searching we soon came across a small pod of around 30 dolphins. We were all so excited because these animals were totally wild and still wanted to play around with you. We soon jumped in and within seconds we had dolphins surrounding us, spinning around, following our movements etc. It was amazing. After around 45mins we jumped back on the boat and warmed ourselves up with some hot chocolate and ginger cookies. After a few minutes we all went to the front of the boat to see the dolphins racing our boat back to shore. Once we got back on land we were all gutted that it had finished, so we had a word with the captain and we got rebooked on for the same trip the next day at a discounted price J That evening was another quiet one as we didn't want to be hungover for the boat.

The following day we got up and set out for Dolphin Encounter again knowing that we would be swimming with an intelligent mammal. We got there, wacked on the wetsuits and jumped on the boat. We were warned that the sea had got rough overnight, so we took 2 travel sickness pills each to prepare for the carnage. 10 minutes out of the harbour the waves got progressively bigger, fortunately for us the pills had kicked in and we were fine. After around 45mins of searching for dolphins we came across a pod of around 300. As soon as you hear the staff say "get ready" the adrenaline starts pumping around your body and you get so excited. The captain drove straight into the middle of the pod and blew the horn telling us to get in the water asap. Once again the dolphins were so playful and excited to see us. We are there to entertain them so the more you do, the more they'll do. A quick hour went past so we had to jump back on the boat, we were the last 3 on the boat and thank god we were. Everyone was chundering (sick) everywhere due to motion sickness; us 3 were just laughing. It's the worst feeling in the world so we were trying to make them laugh and keep their minds off the rocking boat. We found the more you laugh and try not to think about it the better you felt J In the end, us 3 were the only people on the boat who weren't sick. We soon got to the harbour and everyone was extremely relieved to get their feet back on solid ground. Once again we were gutted the trip had ended but we had the best time and we would definitely recommend it to anyone who was travelling to New Zealand regardless of the price.

That night we just slept like babies as we were so tired from keeping the dolphins entertained, the following morning we were jumping back on the Kiwi bus to Nelson J