Greetings!
I have been on the go since I last posted, in fact I am no longer on the South Island. I am currently in the great city of Wellington (Bottom of the North Island) where I will be spending a week or so. Most of the poeple I have made friends with along my journey have departed sadly, but luckily two girls (now one) were still in Wellington when I arrived. We all have had a great time catching up on each other's journeys and hanging out. Claire left today, so its just Joanne and I left. She will be leaving in a couple of days also, but I will hopefully see them both again in Aukland in two weeks before they both depart for good. As I mentioned before Wellington is a lovely city situated by the harbour and I have really enjoyed spending my time here a second time round. Nothing too excited to report, but Claire, Joanne, and I did go to the Zoo, which was surprising good. I saw some animals that I had never seen in person before such as the Sun Bear and Tazmanian Devil. I was also able to feed a Giraffe, which was pretty cool. Other than thatWellington has just been a relaxing stay.
Now I will take you back to the places I have been between Omarama (Dunstan Downs) and Wellington. After I hopped on the bus in Omarama I headed to Mt. Cook for the night, unfortunately the weather was foggy and raining so there really wasn't much to see and I moved on to Lake Tekapo. Tekapo is best known as one of the best star gaizing places in the world. Harvard University even uses the observatory that is located in this beautiful little town. The town itself really isn't much, but the beauty that surrounds it is gorgeous. I was lucky enough to get a couple of warm sunny days to spend their and also one very clear night to gaize out at the millions of stars in the sky. Tekapo was a wonderful relaxing stay and I really enjoyed my time there.
Next I headed to Kaikoura, which is a little seaside town on the east coast of the south island. Kaikoura is best known for whale and dolphin watching/encounters. Much like Tekapo the scenery did not disappoint and was beautiful. I spent three days in Kaikoura all together. Two of the three days were pretty low key spending time walking through the shops and walking the beach, but the first day I was there was the best. On the first day I booked a dolphin encounter tour and it was AMAZING. You put on 5mm wetsuits (which are very thick for a wetsuit) and hop on a boat where they take you out in the Pacific Ocean. The Dusky dolphins are spotted throughout the day, so they know where to take people to swim with them and luckily the pods were only about 30 minutes off shore. We all threw on our snorkel gear and when given the go ahead hopped in the water and swam into the pod. At times there were hundreds of dolphins surrounding you. Most swam on past, but others were more curious. On several different occassions I was able to interact with the curious dolphins. They would swim around and below you, within a half of an arms length. As much as I would have loved to of touched them, I didn't (you were not supposed to), but I did play with them. When they would circle me, I attempted to circle with them. They were much faster obviously, but for a few rounds I kept up with them. The dolphins also enjoyed noise making and when I dove down under the water. They would dive down deeper under me or swim over me. It is amazing how gentle and curious these animals are. The other cool yet strange thing about the Dusky dolphins is that they like eye contact. When I was told this I thought, sure, but it is in fact true. If you lock eye contact with them they take an interest in you. They are completely wild and as much as we like to think that they are entertaining us, we are in fact entertaining them more. With that being said they did give us a great show as we departed. They swam along the boat jumping in an out of the water, others summer salting, and the rest along for the ride. It was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had.
Even the best of experiences sometimes come with negative side effects, dolphin swimming not excluded. The unfortunate thing about swimming with these dolphins is that you are in a boat in the Pacific Ocean, which had moderate swells. There were about 12 people on our boat and I would say 8 of the 12 were sea sick. I tend to battle sea sickness myself, so I knew it would be the downside of this adventure, but i thankfully held it together, which is hard when you have people clinging onto buckets all around you, LOL. Lets just say I spent the whole time on the back of the boat in the open fresh air...Thankfully the crew was very good and used to people getting sick so the whole situation was handled very well. Needless to say, I was very happy to get off that boat and on to land, but I would not hesitate to repeat the dolphin swimming experience. It was that good!
After Kaikoura I hopped on a bus to Picton to catch the Ferry back to Wellington. It was a beautiful day when we departed for our 3.5hr ferry ride, but once we hit open water the boat was definitely rockin'. The 3.5hr ride ended up being abour 4hrs and once again I was very happy to get off the boat. In fact, I think I will be staying off of them for a while now. When we arrived in Wellington Joanne and Claire were waiting at the terminal for me and that as they say is that.
As always photo links are below, so please enjoy.
Mt. Cook & Tekapo https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5yk12dgftkl66fc/P9MKiB58NM
Kaikoura:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0fgpwqrg59nvt85/g-ZVRg2Tcahttps
ferry/Wellington: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/48yovf1o93lhwsl/rg5Zyl9j0T
Also, if you guys have any questions, comments, or would like me to touch on something in a blog, feel free to post them below.
Cheers,
Jenna
