Day 20, Whale tale, Snorkel, Dinner at the Pier

Saturday 20th Jan.

We got a bit of a lie in, our whale watching trip was starting at 11:00, but over night the accommodation we'd booked for Twizel had refused us, they wanted us to stay for at least two nights. So we had a leisurely breakfast and looked for a new place to stay in Twizel. We'd tried to book-a-bach but we ended up with a motel instead. (In fact we did not manage to successfully get accommodation using book-a-bach the entire 7 weeks in New Zealand. The site is not updated regularly so it shows accommodation as being available when it isn't and owners can be slow to reply, Airbnb and looking for motels served us much better)

We drove out to the Whale watching start, arriving too early to check-in, so we went for a walk along the very pebbly beach.

The Whale watching started off with a video briefing about the boat, safety on the boat and life jackets, then we were taken by coach to South bay to get the boat out to the whales. The crew were two girls, the captain and a guy whose English was hard to follow, who gave us information on the whales and generally kept talking through the cruise, he also had control of the videos that played between whale sightings. The ride out was a bit rough, and between whale sightings we were bombing along, having to stay inside the cabin sat down; the couple next to us on the boat were part of a group of 4 from Czechoslovakia, by the second whale sighting the girl was pale and eventually she had to go to the back of the boat because of sea sickness.

The whale watching boats and the planes all talk to each other, they see whales dive, and they know how long they dive for, this gives them a good idea of where they'll reappear. Despite all the bombing about and the guy on the PA it still felt almost magically peaceful every time you saw a whale.

A couple of times we got to ride at speed whilst stood out on the bow, totally awesome!

Finally it was time to head back, our last whale did us the honour of waving us off.

It wasn't all whales, there was also a couple of albatross in the interval.

Albatross departs, they need a lot of runway, and a bit of head wind

When we got back we decided to go for a swim and a snorkel off the rocks outside our motel. Getting into the water was a bit tricky due to the weed, the rocks and the cloudy water. Visibility was pretty poor, not quite like swimming through chicken soup, but pretty close. The important bit though was to check our masks for tomorrow.

We walked back along the beach, and went back to our room to get changed for dinner. Dinner was a bit pricey at the Pier hotel. I had my Paua burger and Karen had green lipped mussels. The mussels seem to be the best choice so far. They are a speciality of New Zealand and are much bigger than the mussels we have in the UK. The guy waiting tables was from Ilkley. He was dubious about me being from Yorkshire due to my accent ! Let alone from just down the road from Ilkley.

We walked back to the motel, and got into bed after a bit of packing and careful alarm setting. Early start tomorrow.