SWIMMING WITH SEALS: KAIKOURA PICTURES
My Kaikoura Music Playlist
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The drive from Christchurch to Kaikoura was nothing short of spectacular. I have never seen endless rolling hills blanketed with so many flowers. The elevation got steep very quickly, probably some of the windiest roads I have ever driven on. They still weren't quite as narrow as Ireland though. Reaching the coast was a great feeling and it finally flattened out and opened up. The majority of South Island, NZ has endless rocky beaches. Not the best for sinking your toes into, but it was rugged and made a drastic contrast with the inner landmass. I can't promote car renting more since it gave us ample opportunity to simply park and explore as we pleased.
After about 30 more minutes we found ourselves in the middle of a one road town called Kaikoura. It was a great little place along the coast with dozens of small shops, authentic food, and famous Jade stone jewelry. Jade is a green stone which can be partially translucent and was used as a source of currency and power for the native people (Maori). It is still regarded as a semi-precious stone today.
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This is where we would do one of the strangest things I've probably ever done when traveling, go swimming with wild fur seals. Admittedly, I didn't really consider that seals are basically 200-300lb blubbery shark/ killer whale treats. Only after I had booked this, did I consider that. I figured I would be with a group. Worst comes to worst all I have to do is out swim the slow ones, and there was a few.
Turns out they had cancelled every trip before us due to poor weather. Usually I'm not a lucky guy, but the weather was great and they had spotted a few out on the rocks earlier in the morning. We got suited up. Before we knew it we were speeding in a pontoon boat across the ocean. My wife started to realize a few things too. For one, she wasn't the biggest fan of open water and two, she usually loses her mind when she has a bird fly to close to her. Everything was going well until we got in the water, then disaster. I was fumbling around with my waterproof camera when I heard her. After a bit of a panic attack, she mastered it, and then we came face to face with these guys. Unfortunately, my waterproof camera wasn't so waterproof. There were some strong currents and it may have come in contact with a rock or two. I was able to capture things for the first 10min by salvaging the memory card. The glare from the sun was strong so I was shooting these videos blind. Still some one of a kind video. Eventually, we were close enough to touch them, the older adults seemed a bit more cautious and kept a few meters in between us though.
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