12th November Christchurch to Kaikoura (dolphin swimming, oh yeah babe)

So taking my first stray bus journey today, off to Kaikoura. Bus seems a little quite, there is only 9 people on the bus, that holds 45 people.

And there is a group that has been traveling together is seems round the south island, and dam they have an annoying bloke called graham with them. He is from peckham in London, and is about 40 years old, but still thinks he is about 15. And he has a way of changing all conversations into a cheese sex thing. not very nice to be around and i hope he isn't with this group for very long not sure i can hack someone like him for long.

So the way to Kaikoura we stop for breakfast, which is just a little cafe in the middle of nowhere. i got a pie, and yes it does look like i have been eating alot of pies, thanks you very much (especially Mr Roche) and to be honest i probably have been, they are so tasty over here.

got to Kaikoura, seems like a nice little town, not very big but then i hear most places in NZ aren't big. This is where they catch alot of crayfish which seems bloody expensive round here, for a whole one it is like $80, or i think thats what the sign says.

so on the stray bus they pass around an activity sheet which has a selection of activities that you can do in the town we stop at, and i have seen they do dolphin swimming, how exciting, i hope it isn't like the dolphin "swim" i tried to do at ocean park in HK.

so i booked it anyway. By the time we got to Kaikoura we had to go straight to the dolphin centre after checking in. so the bus dropped us off. Got to the dolphin centre had a quick video advicing us what the dolphins are like and that they are wild and they may or may not come close to you blah blah, show me the dolphins.

So got the wet suit and all that stuff on again. Got on a boat and it took about 40mins to get out to where the dolphins are. wow i have never seen so many dolphins about, there is about 200 here and they are all wild. So got ready to get in the water, the alarm sounded and we were told to get in the sea and the dolphins are over to the right.

Got over to the right and i see 4 dolphins swim rather fast past underneath me, about a metre or 2 away. and then they disappeared, well this kept going on for a while. basically i felt there was too many people in are good, don't get me wrong i really loved it and i saw the dolphins and they swam near me, but you got to think these are wild animals and there is 15 people jumping the i the water after them they are scared so the fuck off really quickly. and we spent most of our time chasing after the dolphins, getting back on the boat back off when we was near them and that continued for about 40mins.

After that we had to go back to the land, and that was really good i got to see some really cool dolphin jumps and stuff. and got some really good pics.

But i am glad i did the dolphin swim was really nice to be in the water with them.

So for the rest of evening i went back to the hostel, got some chips from the local chip shop, which is meant to the best around here, well it was no Chinese chips but they were pretty good.

So then i had to have an early night so went to my room and read my book for a bit, finally got to sleep.