Yuk! Another early morning, but this time no late night/early morning arrivals to play about in their bags at 1am! Just us at 6.30am haha! We were extremely quiet though, Ellie sprayed the deodorant in the room which made an absolute racket.

We were out on the bus stop by 6.45, the air was so fresh!! The sun was shining - lovely day (to swim with dolphins!) yaaaah!

Our driver seemed very new, and I wasn’t expecting such a high pitched feminine voice to come out of his mouth for a stocky, bald guy wearing rugby gear... maybe I’m being a little stereotypical here? But just took me by complete surprise.

We didn’t have a kiwi experience marked bus but a random Queenstown sightseeing coach that was a manual and not an automatic. He claims the roads were still really bad here since the earthquake and have all been patched up (I mean you could see that they were bad and they’d filled in the earthquake cracks) but he’s definitely just saying that to try and cover the fact that he can’t work the stick. These roads are just like any road around pontypool after the fritter has been around and we’ve had a bucket of rain on them.

The scenery is still gorgeous but the mountains are becoming less dramatic and more round and teletubby like now.
Sheep still everywhere though.

We got down to the coast on the way into Kaikoura, drive said that the roads were all rubble and so bad because of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit in 2016, so bad that it caused loads of landslides and trapped everyone in the town for a couple of months in the end hey had to get the navy seals in to transport people in and out vis the sea.
They’re reconstructing and rebuilding lots of the roads in and out of the town.

The drive in though - oh my wow! We seen a huge pod of dolphins playing in the sea jumping out of the water and doing flips! So cool!! Lots of seals bathing on the rocks and in the sea with their fins sticking out the water.
The water is also very turquoise and the weather is sunny which makes the coast line look even more spectacular.

Checked into Dusky lodge, it seems pretty nice and there’s a heated pool so maybe this evening we’ll use it after dinner and washing and everything in between.

But first... the dolphin encounters!

After a speedy check in, a bus ride down to the dolphin encounter office, wetsuiting up, a briefing and another short bus ride down to the South Bay pier (a few planks of wood more so than a pier) and we were off on two boats out to find the almighty marine life of Kaikoura!

The best possible way to swim with dolphins, no animal cruelty, no feeding them, no swimming pool walls, only one operator allowed to take out two boats at a time 3 times a day with a maximum of 10-15 people swimming at a time, no touching the dolphins, no nothing! Only sing and hum through your snorkels and just float and swim in a little part of their home and let them be themselves. If they wanted to swim away from you they can. They don’t have to stay here but they do, maybe because there is so much marine life for them to eat and the environment is perfect and/or they love to perform to their own accord.

We were riding for about 20 minutes before we got told to get our flippers and masks on ready to flip in the water and sing to those beautiful dusky dolphins.
Holy cow!! There were hundreds of them!! Hundreds of dolphins, wild dolphins surrounding us! Playing with us, circling us, squeaking and singing with us, flipping out of the water with us. They were beautiful! Flipping awesome!
There were closer than arms distance away, it was spectacular!

Look them in the eye, sing/hum and act like them with your arms by your side they said... okay! My dolphin kick has never been better! My god I couldn’t keep up with them and they run circles around me but they were awesome!!

We did two swims, on the outskirts of the 400/500 pod of dolphins and they always cane over to us and played. Baby ones, big ones, one with a floppy fin (who they call Bentley) because he always comes to play alongside the boat or with people.
They would swim right up to me, almost nose to nose! :) ahhhh! We were beaming with delight, I could have stayed in that water al flipping day!!

After we swam for over an hour we got out of wetsuits today off and watch the dolphins, only two boats still. Nothing more than that was allowed, they’re very conscious here of protecting their animals, their native birds and marine life are important to them. The dolphins were everywhere 360 degrees around the boat, flipping in the water, jumping out of the water, smacking their tails on the water for attention. Baby ones trying to jump out of the water aswell, they’re incredible! You can sort of figure out that they all have different personalities it’s intriguing to watch.

Ask two bloody massive albatrosses we’re sitting pretty on the water. They are so funny trying to take off, their huge webbed feet flap across the water when they run across it to take off, they’re massive! I now realise who the seagulls are inspiring to be these days! (And they’re not far behind).

They saved one on Friday, the boats were out with the dolphin encounter and an albatross was sat in the water, his wing broken so they scooped him up and put him in a big piece of cloth and they took him to wellington to have surgery on his wing, because he would have died other wise. The photo of the guy holding him, haha! The albatross’s head was probably twice the size of the skipper holding him.

What an absolutely crazy crazy experience, words can not describe how incredible this afternoon was! We smiled the entire time we were out there, pretty much speechless at how lucky we were and how spectacular that was, who the hell would want to swim with a dolphin in a swimming pool after swimming with 400-500 wild dolphins!!!

Unfortunately nothing lasts forever so we had to go back, we walked through the little town on the way back to the lodge. To do washing and have dinner. Washing was a pain in the arse because we had to walk about 700m to the laundrette then back after the wash had finished and back again after the dryer had finished. What a palarva! But now we are all clean again!

And kaikoura has been a five star day!