Sperm Whale day!

With our usual inability to pre-book excursions (but it's so hard to plan we you're on a bike!) we were lucky enough to get a slot on todays 3pm whale watching boat. We also got ourselves on the waiting list for 'Dolphin Encounter' but mainly spent the morning eating as we were tired and hungry!

Whale Watch Kaikoura was a very slick outfit and thought of everything right through to ginger capsules for sea sickness. We were coached out to our boat and then whizzed out to sea to find the sperm whales. We had a great trip and saw two whales surface, Little Nick and Tiako. It was incredible to see such creatures in the wild and when they dived back under with their famous tail flick it was really moving. As our guide said "a 17m animal leaving the surface without a splash!". I was really happy as I'd wanted to see whales for years. We also saw plenty of other wildlife on the trip - a pod of 200 Dusky dolphins, Royal Albatross, fur seals, blue penguins and other birds including petrels. I was maybe a bit too excited and bought a cuddly toy sperm whale as a souvenir. He'll fit nicely into one of my panniers with all the light-weight kit we've bought!