We arrived after a short drive from Picton only to realise later that we'd left behind our cool box fill of food! We er going to drive back but decided there wasn't much point but kicked ourselves for being stupid! It meant we had to buy a replacement as we'd borrowed it from the people we were staying with in Christchurch. As we were checking into the hostel, Lucy randomly bumped into a girl from her uni course, small world!
There wasn't much to do other than dolphin and whale watching which the area is famous for, we could walk round the whole place in about 10 mins! Vik and Luce had booked in to go swimming with dolphins but were a bit worried bout the bad weather stopping us, there were storm warnings for th next day. However when we awoke the next morning it seemed quite clear although it was freezing and there were a few spots of rain. The whale watching toours had been cancelled so we were a bit worried but we arrived to find out it was still going ahead, phew!
We were given very warm thick wetsuits, boots, gloves, flippers, hood and snorkels and once we'd donned them we were briefed and set out in a bus to the port we were to sail from. Once on the boat we realised that the sea was actually quite choppy and some people got rather seasick! It took us about 25 minutes to locate the dolphn, we could see loads of them swimming along and jumping out the water. They were beautiful! We had ti take a seat on the back of the boat with our legs in the water while it was still moving which gave us the chance to check out the water temp, which was pretty cold! Once in the water however it wasnt as cold as we thought, the wetsuits did their job! There were so many dolphins just swimming around that it was very easy to get close to them. We'd been told that to attract their attention we should make silly noises or sing through our snorkels. This was quite amusing when we stuck our heads out the water and could hear about 13 people talking to themselves! Although I dont think the dolphins were that partal to our voices! They came really close anyway, you could easily touch them. It was an amazing experience and you could play with them too! It you made eye contct they'd follow you around in a circle! At one point about 8 swam past almost touching!
Back on the boat we got to warm up with a hot hose. We had to change back into our dry clothes on the boat...about 13 of us, boys and girls all attemting to get dressed while the boat swayed loads! It was a rather interesting experience as there wasnt much space at all!
Back on land it had begun to rain and we jumped into the car with Rach and began the journey back to the lovely house in Christchurch! lovely warm haven from the cold!
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