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Hi all, well since I last typed. I have enjoyed lots of great things and have just uploaded some more photos. We are in Queenstown now and tomorrow we fly to Sydney. We've been away 3 weeks and feel totally refreshed and relaxed. The Killers are playing in this cafe.
Where was I? Well in Kaikoura. We joined our whale tour boat and were warned about sea sickness. Anyway, I remember years ago being on a hover craft with my family. We were crossing the english channel one way or the other and the waves were huge and we were bouncing around on the rubber ring type of boat and each time we descended fairground style to hit the bottom of the wave, my sister went in a loud voice 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' She was having a great time. Others were not. Anyway, this boat ride reminded me of that because despite typical kiwi welcome and bright safe boat and lots of sunshine and blue water, the swell created monster waves, not surfy ones, just huge ones that we kinda fell from the top of repeatedly again and again. Fun! Anyway, the coast here drops away to 1000m very suddenly and that why the whales love it! We travelled out, with the crew of the boat in touch with other boats and planes who were spotting and then before we knew it, there were were, metres from the monstrous back of a male sperm whale. He was blowing the air and moving a bit and prepared to dive over the 10 mins we watched him. I expected it to be a bit disney but the amazing place, the closeness of the whale and it's sheer presence took my breath away. We went to another part of the ocean and this time saw two whales. This doesn't happen much. These males like being alone their sheds so to speak (the females prefer warmer waters elsewhere). And here's why they are called Sperm Whales (lets get this one out in the open...) When a sperm whale was first cut up and it's head cut in half, the whalers found a large amount of what looked like, well, you know, sperm, so the name stuck so to speak. Researchers are still finalising why these whales have a head full of it but one thought is that it freezes into a heavy solid block as the whale descends so helping to pull the whale down towards the ocean floor. I like that idea.
We stayed at an irish pub that night. We decided to eat in town and after waiting for nearly an hour for a bowl of chowder that looked like well, sick, frankly, I'd had enough and I took the manager on one side and gave him an earfull. Back at the irish pub, we ordered food that wasn't great either and next day just headed out on the road to Franz Josef, 500km away. I'd had to take the plumbing apart to make the loo stop leaking so without the natural scenery and amazing whales, probably underwhelmed with Kaikoura. However I did get an amazing run in that afternoon. Wow. We're running when we can to try and keep a vague sense of fitness!
So off we go to Franz Josef. Straight across the country...
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