Seal Pups:Kaikora

June 17 – Kaikoura –

After spending the night at a pull off on the side of the road in the middle of NZ we headed a couple hours north to Kaikoura. This city has a population of about 2,000 which is kind of a lot (for the South Island). This town was known for its whaling industry and now known for its abundance of wildlife especially in the sea!! mainly for whale watching (the Sperm Whale watching is perhaps the best and most developed in the world) and swimming with or near dolphins. It is also one of the best reasonably accessible places in the world to see open ocean seabirds such as albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters.

This town is BEAUTIFUL because it is situated on the Pacific Ocean and the Seaward Kaikora Mountians (part of the Southern Alps) are right along the shore! In the summer you can see the Dusky Dolphins from the shore! Dolphins, whales, birds and seal lions are the most popular animals you can see in Kaikora.

We went to the peninsula to see some fur seals!! There were about 10 seals hanging out, swimming and fighting it was fun to see but there were heaps of bugs so we left pretty quickly. Before we did though there was a pup(baby) seal that came over to me right below the walk way – adorable!!

seals and mountains

Jeff and I then walked around the cute artsy town, I bought a scarf and some plates/mugs for our apartment made by a local Kaikora artist. I love her work ad hopefully she can ship me some stuff back in the states!

We then wanted to see some more wildlife of course so we drove about 30 minutes north to Ohau. We saw hundreds of seals just hanging out/playing on the huge rocks.

I started to make some loud noises to see what they would do – one tried to come up and fight me but it couldn’t hop up the hill!! J

Next we went on a walk up Ohau stream to the waterfall. This is a place where seal pups go when they are a few months old for about six months (leaving to eat) to stay safe, play, and hang with the other baby seals. When we walked up the path you had to keep your head on a swivel because there were seals EVERYWHERE!!!! We finally made our way up there to the falls, there were about 150 seal pups playing in the falls, hopping around, basically having a ball with a few tourists scattered about watching these little dudes having a blast. The pups were really calm around the people, not really caring about us – they just wanted to have fun.

Oh just sleeping backwards!

seal crossing!!

This basically was the best thing ever. No exaggerating! Having hundreds of seal pups playing around you with a waterfall in the background is the best way to make someone’s day, month, or even year! After having our spirits brightened by the beautiful little pups, we went back into Kaikoura to get ready for the night. We ended up free camping next to a public bathroom, which was not pleasant, but the city has rules that prevented us from camping anywhere else.

Lunch after the pups!

looking out into the ocean after lunch

June 18 -

The next day we woke up extra early to go on the Dolphin Encounter tour that was scheduled for 8:30am. The way the tour works, we had the option to swim with the dolphins or just watch, and we elected to do the latter. However, for our 8:30am tour, we entered a ridiculously long safety video at 9:15am for the swimmers, and now we know way too much about safety when it comes to snorkeling with dolphins. At 10am, we boarded the boat at the dock and left into the rough sea out of the South Bay of Kaikoura. They told us before the tour that the sea was moderately calm, which we learned meant 6-8 foot swells. Thank God I took some ginger pills before we left because I do not do very well with rough seas on a small boat.

Now the highlight of the tour was that we got to see a Sperm Whale, which was pretty cool, because it kept blowing water into the air, like it was out of a documentary. Let me remind that the purpose of our voyage was to see DOLPHINS. After 45 minutes of tossing around the ocean, and 3 members of our tour puking their guts out (thank god it wasn’t me), the guides told us that they couldn’t locate dolphins and we would be heading into the dock. Needless to say, Jeff and I were disappointed, but they gave us hot chocolate and cookies, so Jeff was happy.

what we were supposed to see

When we got back to precious dry land, we loaded up Britzy and headed north towards Blenheim. However, before we took a detour to see the seal pups one last time for a pick-me-up after the dolphin let down. Moral of the story, don’t trust dolphins, baby seals always deliver.