The big highlight of this week, and one of the undoubted highlights of my trip so far, was swimming with dolphins at Kaikoura.
Kaikoura is a tiny coastal village a couple of hours north of Christchurch. Just off the coast the ocean plunges to tremendous depths. As a result, the marine life in the area is prolific and there are daily whale spotting and dolphin swimming trips. I had some reservations about going on the dolphin swimming trip, as I had visions of there being hoards of snorkellers fighting to see a couple of dolphins. However, this was definitely not the case!
Around 40mins after leaving Kaikoura the first dolphins were spotted so our group of around a dozen snorkellers entered the water. Almost immediately we were surrounded by dolphins shooting past us from every direction. This certainly took my mind off the fact that the water was freezing! At times, there were dolphins in every direction that you looked. What made this experience more special was the fact that these were wild dolphins who were swimming with us because they were interested in seeing us - not because they had been trained or because they were being fed.
After around 30 minutes we got out of the water to see another amazing sight - an enormous royal albatross giving us a spectacular flyby! As we warmed up on the boat with hot drinks, we were treated to displays of "aquabatics" by the dolphins - all manner of jumps and somersaults were performed for us. All in all, a pretty amazing day.
Click HERE for photos.
