A whale of a time!

From Christchurch we went first to Hanmer Springs, a small spa town which I'd thought from the map would be up in the hills, but turned out to be just below them. We'd thought about treating ourselves to a spa bath, but it took longer than we'd thought to get there and over lunch we decided that the spa had looked rather crowded, so we passed up that one and pressed on towards Kaikoura, a place famous for its wildlife and particularly its whales. We went via a shortcut that the map indicated would be a scenic route: in fact it wasn't all that scenic, and a lot of the minor road we took had loose chippings and we couldn't go too fast at all. We stopped for one view, and it was there I discovered my camera had jammed: the lens wouldn't either come out or go back. What a disaster!

We arrived at Kaikoura in good time. We'd booked on a whale watching trip, so after finding our B & B (splendid views, tiny bathroom) we went down to ask the whale watch company what the prospects were. Some trips that afternoon had been cancelled for bad weather, and we'd been told by someone we met that the whales had all gone north anyway. This proved to be very pessimistic: the lady was very helpful and said they'd spotted two whales, which were not in their usual place because of a trawler that had gone fishing there. The weather forecast was reasonable, and she thought our trip would probably be on. Thus encouraged, we set out for a camera shop to see if I could get my camera fixed. The man there said it might be possible, but would cost virtually as much as a new camera, and he couldn't do it there and then. So I went for plan B: a shiny new little Nikon Coolpix camera, smaller, cheaper and better than the old one, with the added bonus of being pink! I spent most of the evening learning how to use it. First, though, we did a little exploring and went down to Fyffe Point, at the end of the beach, where we saw seals, a heron and oystercatchers. We climbed the cliff and enjoyed a beautiful view both up and down the coast. Then we went back as far as a beach-side stall selling shellfish suppers, and treated ourselves to a huge crayfish between us, which was delicious, and more so for being eaten in the open air - a lovely way to dine! Next day, we packed up, checked out and went down to the whale watching place which was crowded. They were running a little late and it was full of people for the 10 o'clock boat: once they'd gone to their coach, there was more space and we sat on front seats for the cinema and safety briefing. In due course these were shown, we boarded the coach for the ten minute drive to the marina, and so on to the boat. The sea wasn't exactly calm, and the boat was driven at about 30 knots so it was, shall we say, quite exciting! There was news of a whale, but it had dived and was likely to be some time feeding on the bottom, so to pass the time we visited a huge school of dolphins. These were very difficult to photograph well, but lovely to look at. Then we headed for the whale's feeding area. After a bumpy ride we stopped for the crew to listen through hydrophones. They can apparently hear the whales 'clicking' which indicates that they are feeding, and shows where they are. Location confirmed, we moved more slowly to the exact place, and a second listen showed we were right above the whale. Then the clicking stopped, meaning it was on its way up - and there, just about fifty yards away, we saw it surface. We moved slowly up to lie alongside, and everyone was snapping cameras like mad. The whale was blowing from its blowhole about every 15 seconds, as it re-oxygenated itself. This went on for about ten minutes, with views of about half its body for part of the time. Then it stopped blowing and started to move in a different way. 'Cameras ready' said our commentator, and sure enough, in seconds it flipped up its huge tail, giving just time for a last picture, and then dived again. And that was it: we turned and sped through an increasingly choppy sea for home. It turned out we were very, very lucky. The previous trip didn't see a whale at all: the following one was cancelled for bad weather. Ours was the only trip that day to see a whale! By now the weather had turned pretty nasty, so we drove north up to Blenheim, our next stay, right in the middle of Marlborough wine country. We passed quite a few vineyards, but this was nothing to what we'd see next day, and I'll tell you about that in the next post.