Our New Zealand Adventure: Day 21, swimming with dolphins, church, antarctic centre,Christchurch

Sun Jan 21

So a very, very early start as check in to swim with dolphins was at 05:10. The alarm went off at 04:30. We also had to be out of our motel this morning.
After suiting up in wetsuits and carrying our flippers, masks, snorkels and hoods we watched a safety video before boarding buses for the 5 minute journey to the boat. 16 swimmers could be taken on each boat and they had 3 of them. Once aboard, the boats moved swiftly through the water for about 25 minutes to find our first pod of dolphins. We were told dolphins are attracted to noise and we should make as many squealy sounds as we could, we should also keep our hands by our sides and if a dolphin approached us we should turn around in circles as they would try to circle us.

In the briefing room about 05:30

Sitting on the back of the boat waiting for the signal to go.

It was amazing. They were all around us and so close. Dusky dolphins and common ones ( I can tell them apart now) we squealed and circled and they swam around and through us. Eventually the pod moved on and we returned to the boat. I ditched the hood on my wetsuit. It was making my full face mask leak and the water wasn't that cold that I needed it. Twice more we found pods of dolphins and swam among them. AMAZING!!!!!

Yes we were this close

View of boat and swimmers looking down at dolphins

These are dusky dolphins

After our swim we got changed on the boat into dry warm clothes and the boat slowly followed a pod so we could see them somersault, slap their tails on the water and jump.

They liked to swim next to and around the bow

Somersault

Hot chocolate and ginger biscuits were on offer as we watched.

Our two guides were both English, one of them came from Fleet! She was a vetinary nurse working the season and loving every moment.

We were back at the dolphin encounter centre about 9 am. Just in time. It was Sunday and the only Catholic service was at 9:30. Jono dropped me off and raced back to the motel to finish packing up the car and to check out.

I said service instead of mass deliberately. The parish here stretches from Picton to Kaikurra and westward too. It covers 7 towns with almost a 3 hour travel time between them. Kaikoura gets a priest 2 Sundays of the month and on the others it has communion and the liturgy of the word led by parishioners and religious.

The following week the Cardinal was going to visit for a big back to school mass and picnic bbq and the newsletter urged the neighbouring towns to attend at Kaikoura as 'it was only a 2 hour drive', a start at 7am would get them to the slightly later mass time of 10am no problem!

A very elegant lady came over and asked if she could sit next to me. She was very friendly and told me alot about herself. When mass started she was enthusiastic about singing and responding. Her words were completely made up nonsense words but they fitted the rhythm and they were said or sung with such joyfulness and intent that it didn't matter that they didn't mean anything to anyone else. She was from the local home for the elderly and was a joy to sit with.
Jono met me outside afterwards having managed to fit in a visit to the cafe for a coffee and a caramelised onion and bacon bruschetta topped with cheese. 4:30 and the small bowl of cereal I'd had before the dolphins seemed a very long time ago but we needed to get on the road to Christchurch.
The road is still under repair with roadworks along the coast road. Once again our sat-nav insisted the road did not exist and we had to ignore it.

Single track road ahead, the cliffs have wire on them and there were fences to stop rocks landing on cars.

20 km after Kaikoura the road left the coast and the roadworks behind and instead wound it's way through the country side. We made good time and reached the Antarctic Centre at Christchurch at 12:40. I was very, very hungry by now but had to wait longer because when we got our tickets we were booked on the Hagglund ride at 13:00. The Hagglund is an all terrain vehicle used in the Antarctic so we were put in the back of one and driven across piles of logs, over crevasses, up 45 deg slopes, through water and generally tossed around and shaken a bit to show it's capabilities. Not something to do just after eating!

Finally we were able to grab lunch at the cafe!

Christchurch is where pretty much every nation who has a base or people on Antarctica flies out of. It has a huge research centre here and resupplies the Antarctic bases every two weeks. The spin off centre for tourists has lots to do and a huge amount of information to take in.

We started with experiencing an Antarctic storm.