New Zealand apparently has daylight savings time. I was utterly baffled this morning at how the sun had been coming up at 8am on the west coast but came up at 7am here, and why I was so wide awake at 6am. It wasn’t until much later in the day when I noticed sunset was at 6pm, while it had definitely been around 7pm yesterday, that I realized a) I was more intelligent when I was younger and b) America isn’t the only country to unnecessarily mess about with everyone’s sleep schedule.
As a result of the time change the 7:15am checkin for the whale watch trip didn’t feel early at all. We were on the water by 8am, but since we were the first boat of the day we had to find the whales. The crew would stop the boat, shut off the engines, drop a hydrophone, listen for whales, pull up the hydrophone, and then move on after announcing they didn’t hear any whales, but that was fine by me – I cared less about the whales and was more excited just to be on the water. There were a ton of fur seals, dolphins, and albatross out and about, and while it would have been nice to see a sperm whale, you can’t go wrong being on the ocean in perfect conditions.
After one last listen for whales we started heading back to harbor, dolphins surfing on the bow wave, when a call came in that there was a humpback near shore. Since they refund 80% of the trip cost for any trip that doesn’t find whales the crew was motivated to find the humpback, and we did eventually stumble on him, but only had a couple of minutes with the whale before we had to get back to pick up the next group. Despite having seen a whale, the company apparently felt that this wasn’t a good enough sighting, and still refunded the bulk of the trip price for everyone – if ever you’re in Kaikoura, go whale watching with Whale Watch Kaikoura, they gave us a great day on the water and then honored their “whale guarantee” because the whale experience we had didn’t meet their expectations.
Following the whale watch and a shockingly inexpensive seafood lunch from the Kaikoura Seafood BBQ Kiosk, the rest of the day was spent hiking along the beach with the grumpy yet highly entertaining fur seals. There are several hundred of them all along the shore here, some playing in the water, most of them sleeping, many of them arguing, but all of them a delight to see. After a few hours with the seals I decided to call it a day early, and am editing photos and writing this entry before sunset (anyone who has traveled with me before knows how rare it is for me to not be doing something whenever it’s light out). The plan for tomorrow is to get up early, make one last visit to the seals at sunrise, and then sadly I’ll be driving down to Christchurch to fly away from the South Island, but I’m excited to start the next part of the adventure on the North Island.
Some whale is better than no whale – and what a great company to be so generous with its customers!