Christchurch to Kaikoura

The next leg of our trip took us from Christchurch up to Hamner Springs.  It's about an hour north and in a beautiful setting.  It's a spa and resort town where Kiwi's go to have fun and relax!

From Hamner Springs we road east to the coast and then to a place called "Cathedral Lookout".  The view of the bay was beautiful!

But this setting really was stunning!

From "Cathedral Lookout" we drove north to Kaikoura the home of Whale Watching in New Zealand.

This is the bay where whale
...normally Humpback....come and feed

There are a number of choices for trying to find whale to 
watch, but the above group with five vessels at there
 disposal seemed to really have their act together.  
if you don't sight a whale, 60% of your fee is refunded.

Each vessel will take up to 49 passengers

Seagull and Albatross seemed to be everywhere!

  

Then off in the distance we caught our first glimpse of a whale.

Their spout is a dead give away and actually not to hard

to find.  This was really exciting!

Then like a log floating in the ocean 

there's a whale in front of you!

The crew was really organized to tell you all that was going on.

When the back comes out of the water as you see below, if you're

ready, you'll get some good shots as the whale dives.

Then they are gone from sight for up to an hour!

 

On any given trip you might see one to three whale.

On our morning out we got to see 6 different whale and 

their dive to the bottom.  Really lucky!

In addition to the whale, there must have been

hundreds of dolphins!  They were around us

on all sides and jumping and playing in the distance.

Of course up near the shore you had your standard issue of seals!

The area around Kaikoura is beautiful as you can 
see from the photo array below!

Kaikoura is to the right and the "South Bay" is to the right.

It's in the "South Bay" where all the whale are found.