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After visiting Cloudy Bay vineyard, we drove onto Kaikoura to try and see the famous Sperm Whales.
The weather was pretty bad,we booked ourselves onto an early trip for the following day,6.45am, all the other trips were booked out as the previous day, all trips had to be cancelled due to bad weather.
When we arrived for our trip, the company told us that all boats would be going out, but there was a high sea sickness warning. Having been on plenty of boat trips we still decided to go, we thought there may be a slight rocking of the boat or something but we'd be fine.
About 10 minutes later when the boat was out to sea we immediately began to be grateful that we hadn't had any breakfast that morning! The boat was rocking furiously from side to side and the worst thing was about 10 people on the boat had already been sick. The poor woman who worked there kept getting handed sick parcels that she had to dispose of, don't know how she managed to keep saying thank you for every extra bag she received. Now thats customer service for you! All pretty gross. At one point Rich turned a horrid shade of yellow and we thought he was going to make his own little gift for the lady on the boat, however his sea legs came through.
The captain of the boat was trying to track the whales by placing a microphone into the water to see if he could hear any whale activity. Eventually after about 30 minutes, a whale was located. We were able to wobble out of the boat onto the deck and view the whale as it rose to the surface. Apparently sperm whales are champion divers,they are able to dive down as deep as 2,000 metres! After feeding they come back up to the surface for about 5 minutes or so.
The whale was huge, about twice the size of the boat we were on. They can grow up to 20 metres and weigh around 50 tons. You could see water from the whales blowhole, it would relax for several minutes on the surface and then finally do a small flip and show the tail fin before disappearing back into the ocean to search for more food. This was brilliant to see, its amazing to be so close to a creature in its own natural habitat.
We were quite lucky and got to see 3 sightings in all. We have to say we were glad to get back on dry land though. Was magnificent to view the sperm whales, but the boat trip was pretty awful. Don't think we could ever join the navy anyway, just haven't got the sea bellies for that!
Next stop Greymouth
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