The Best Thing ... EVER!!!

Two hours north of Christchurch, in the town of Kaikoura I got to do one of the things I had been most looking forward to since I started planning my trip. Maybe something I could say I've wanted to do since I was a child. I swam with dolphins.

(Rema's in the middle getting ready to jump back in)
Kaikoura is a coastal town situated at the feeding banks for all kinds of sea life. It wasn't actually included on my bus pass but my driver for the past few days had enough room to do me the great favour of letting me hop on for free. This saved me the hassle and cost of buying a partial leg from the bus company's head office. As we cruised along the coastal highway Stuart the driver told us to keep an eye out for seals and dolphins. We saw a few frolicking seals, which although adorable were no surprise by this point, but no dolphins. Instead I happened to be the first to spot something far more rare in those waters; Killer Whales. A pod of three or four with sleek black fins gliding in and out of the waves. They seemed to be following us up the coast and into the heart of town.

The dolphin swim was arranged through magic bus who had a group deal and I'm lucky they did because I tried booking ahead on my own and there was nothing available for at least two weeks. Thanks again to Stuart. We dropped our gear at the Dusky Lodge hostel and were dropped off ourselves at the Encounter Kaikoura tour company.
I've always liked dolphins. I still have a somewhat beat up book on dolphins with excellent photos that my uncle Gerard got for me through the book business he used to run. My parents took me to sea world a few times where I one got to feed one during a performance and pet a different one in a tank, but this was a whole different experience.

The Dolphins I met this day were not trained, they were not caged, and they were not being lured with food. They were totally wild. Keeping this in mind we were instructed not to touch them and to not think of them as our entertainment but instead to think of ourselves as their entertainment. We were encouraged to make noise and to dive down a bit in hopes of engaging their interest.

(A Dusky nearly brushing up against me)
The tour works like this, two boats get loaded up with ten swimmers and groups of other people who are just going to watch from the deck. Meanwhile spotters locate the pod of dolphins as they are heading to the feeding grounds. The boat pulls up ahead of the pod and then they just drop the swimmers in the water. The Dusky Dolphins, which is the local species don't find us threatening so the just swim right around us. Hopefully you get a few to check you out before they all pass by. Once they move on we get back in the boat and repeat the process a few times.

The first few moments as we confronted the pod were stunning. As boat came to a stop we were sitting on the back launch pad and we could really see the size of the pod for the first time. When I think of a pod of dolphins or other sea mammals I tend to think of not much more than ten. This single pod consists of over one hundred Duskys. The effect of seeing that many large animals stampeding straight at you is indescribable. Then we jumped in.

(a fellow swimmer getting back in the boat)
I flattened out my body and dipped my besnorkeled head in. Instantly I saw a Dusky less than three feet below me passing in parallel. Below him were two more moving in layers. I forgot myself and said "wow" taking in a mouthful of sea water. I think I wasn't the only one to make that mistake.

(Gliding)
They were everywhere. This was one of the two big reasons I had bought a diving shell for my camera. I didn't want to get so preoccupied taking pictures that I missed the moment itself so I just fired away and hope for the best. Soon enough they had passed us by so we got called back onto the boat and we took off trying to get ahead of the pod again.
(I feel so pretty in this outfit)
We repeated this process four times and I think we spent 45 minutes in the water all together. Between swims we got to ride sitting on the rear step of the boat.

(just a portion of the pod, look closely at the top end)
On our fourth run I managed to finally get enough interest from a Dusky that he circled me a couple of times before moving on, which is considered a real coup.

(baby seal)

After that we caught our breath for a bit while we watched from the deck. On the way back into shore we passed the seals we'd seen from the coast highway.


(our twin tour boat)
I was riding high after that so I enjoyed a stroll through town back to the hostel with Rema and Chris, two people I met on the bus into town. There was a park lined with archways made of sperm whale jaw bones (left over from Kaikoura's now illegal whaling days) and we stopped in a local greasy spoon for a much needed late lunch after all that swimming in high waves.
(Sperm Whale jaw bones lining the park path ... ok, it's weird)
There also seemed to be a strange conflagration of events going on in Kaikoura that day. Firstly I ran into Dermot Canterbury as I checked in for my Dolphin swim. He had been the kayaking partner that I had gone into the drink with in Cathedral Cove at the start of my trip. After that it seemed to be Canadian day in Kaikoura with a special concentration on Ontario. Most of my time here I had been a minority surrounded by European tourists. The few Canadian I had met were mainly from the west coast. This day however the girl that checked me in for the Dolphin tour had gone to U of T for school. one of the guides on the boat was born in Windsor and had done some primary school in Scarborough. Rema and another guy on my bus Brian were both Torontonians, although Rema was living out west now. Back at the hostel we bumped into Trish from Alberta and Keith a Torontonian living in Sydney. Finally we had all the others nationalities surrounded!

(Barry Sanders, abusing art around the world)
This made for a tremendous night. The Hostel had a huge pool and fantastic Thai restaurant out back where we congregated for a dinner. Franci who I had hiked the base of Franz Josef with was also there. We had been traveling in parallel on and off since then and I was glad to be seeing her one last time. She was right up there amongst my favorite travel companions. We picked up an Irish guy named Dermot (not the one from kayaking) and we ended the night in the town pub.

(THE CANADIANS: Brian, Keith, Rema, Trish and Me)
Maybe it was just the high from the Dolphin swim but of all the little towns I had seen in New Zealand, Kaioura had been my favorite. I wished I could spend an extra night because it was a beautiful place and despite having a couple more days in Christchurch ahead of me, I had already been through there. I felt like Kaikoura was the final chapter of my Journey through New Zealand ... and it was perfect.