Well after kayaking off the Abel Tasman coast we thought things couldn't get much better - but today we saw two sperm whales, and about 500 dolphins, from an aeroplane!
This is the beach where we parked our wagon last night (near Kekarenga) - the Pacific Ocean was indeed pacific, although judging by the huge quantities of driftwood washed up here it sometimes gets a little bit more stormy.
And here's the wagon itself
As we drove south from here towards Christchurch, we passed through Kaikora - this is a well known whale-spotting location because under the sea is a huge deep trench (1,300m deep) which brings up all the food the whales like, so they hang around having an "all you can eat" buffet. We had already decided not to go on a whale watching boat because it takes ages to get out to where the whales are likely to be seen (about 2 miles out at sea) and that's a long time when you're 8 or 10 years old.
But as we drove out of Kaikora, having eaten the largest ice creams on the planet (frozen boysenberry yoghurt in a waffle cone? Yes please!) we spotted a little airfield with whale watching flights. Couldn't resist, and it was so worth it!
We went up in this tiny aircraft, which could take six passengers and one pilot
Tomorrow's our last day on South Island. We're going to look at Christchurch city, then we fly to Melbourne in the evening.
Love to everyone, Vicky, Mike, Thomas and Kitty xxxx
But as we drove out of Kaikora, having eaten the largest ice creams on the planet (frozen boysenberry yoghurt in a waffle cone? Yes please!) we spotted a little airfield with whale watching flights. Couldn't resist, and it was so worth it!
We went up in this tiny aircraft, which could take six passengers and one pilot
The air base and local whale spotting boats all share GPS locations of the whales they know are around, so within five minutes we were two miles out at sea and looking down on this 18m sperm whale as it had a breather on the surface - there are two boats and the whale is in the centre of them:
After five minutes circling it, it dived down flipping its tail as it went. We flew over a huge pod of dolphins as they jumped and somersaulted out of the water, then found another whale further out at sea (it had just come up, so no boats were there yet, but we could see them approaching at top speed!). As we turned to go back, a third whale had surfaced nearby, but it was time for us to fly back to Kaikora - two out of three ain't bad!
Love to everyone, Vicky, Mike, Thomas and Kitty xxxx
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