The weather looks calm today which is good as we are going to spend the morning on a boat searching for Whales. We don’t have to check in until 10.30 so after breakfast we went for a walk down to Kaikoura town to have a look round, unfortunately the town was not as large as we thought so we called into tourist information to have a look at what else there was to do in case we get back early from the whale watching, by the time we had wondered round a bit more and gone down to the beach for a look at the sea it was time to go and check in in so we went to the Whaleway station (their naming not mine!) to make sure we didn’t miss out. The update board said that the sperm Whales were out of range, but they had seen a pod of pilot whales which we should be able to see, they also said there was a medium chance of seasickness so it was a good thing that we had taken our tablets this morning. At 11.00 we had our safety briefing then got on the bus to be taken round to the boat. On the way out we saw a lot of birds, among them the Southern Petrels, Huttons Shearwater which apparently you don’t see very often and Wandering Albatross which are massive but to be honest didn’t do a lot of wandering they just sat on the water looking at us looking at them! Finally then Whales arrived, we saw a couple of large pods of Pilot Whales they were swimming around with a group of bottlenose dolphins both of which swim low to the water so it was quite hard tell which was which originally but after a while of watching them you can start to distinguish them. Playing along with the whales and dolphins were a couple of seals. All too soon it was time to turn round and come back and just as we did the whales came really close to the boat, you could actually hear them breathing. By the time we got back it was almost 2pm so we walked round to town and had something to eat, then went back to the room to watch the US election results, when it looked like Trump had won, in slight disbelief we went out for something to eat and drink!
