Toques and Tan Lines: Marine Life

Helloooo Saskatchewan!! The craziness is over and a new form of craziness begins soon (more on that later!). The end of my time with Haka Tours was phenominal and for those of you who are friends with me on Facebook you've probably already seen some of the pictures. What an adventure.

I have a hard time picking a favourite place in New Zealand, every place had it's own personality and something that made it special. As far as time spent near the ocean Kaikoura had to be my favourite for 2 reasons, the seals and the dolphins! I have seen these animals multiple times in my life, but never like this!

Kaikoura was our first stop on the south island of New Zealand and my God it did not disappoint. Hanging all around the coast near this town is a huge colony of fur seals! At first I didn't notice them as they blend in very well with the rocks, but once I knew what to look for they were everywhere! We got out to have a closer look and there must have been close to 100 just in that one small area. I thought this was super cool until about 10 minutes later I had my mind blown.

I don't remember any specifics about this place because Si, our tour guide, told us to not read any of the signs along the path as we walked up to the waterfall. I'm glad I refrained, the surprise at the end of the trail was worth it! In the pool at the base of the waterfall were 3 seal pups! The seal colony uses this sheltered place as a nursery for the young pups to learn how to socialize and swim! We were there at the end of the pupping season so we only saw the 3 but at times there can be hundreds of the little guys playing around in the pool. The best part was that they didn't even care that we were there, they kept swimming and playing the entire time. One did stop to take a quick look at us, but then he was right back to splashing around with his buddies. Our group even got the pleasure of watching one make the journey down the stream back to the ocean.

The next morning I was signed up to swim with the dolphins. I was extremely excited for this but I didn't want to get my hopes up too high as they are wild animals and who knows what they'll do on any given day. That day the stars aligned and my expectations were exceeded by a thousand times. Dolphin Encounter was great, they had people searching from land and the air to try and find a pod for us to swim with. It did take a decent amount of time to find them but there were enough big albatross around to occupy that time I barely noticed it. Then all of a sudden the crew is telling us to put on our gear as the pod was headed directly towards us, and straight into the water I went. BOOM! Dusky dolphins in every direction I can look! Luckily for us they were feeling playful that day and they stuck around our boat for so long, I was in the water for at least half an hour. They made me so dizzy, they loved to swim circles around you, your goal was to try and keep up! Then they would break off and another one would swim up from below your feet, right in front of your face. They got close enough that I probably could have touched one (the crew did ask that we not do this, wild animal, fear, yea it makes sense not to). It was such an awesome experience, I'd love to do it again. My friend, Dustin, had a GoPro on while we were doing this so if you want an idea of what it looked like in the water, have a look here.

Even once we got out of the water the show didn't stop with this pod. We were able to sit on the bow of the boat for close to 45 minutes taking pictures and videos. They did backflips, barrel rolls, slapped their tails on the surface, and jumped out of the water just because they could. If the boat started up, 4 or 5 of them would swarm to the front of the boat and ride in the wave. It was quite spectacular to see, although it was interesting to note that no one exactly knows why they do all these crazy aerials. To me it sort of looked like they were just having fun showing off what they could do.

I have some videos uploaded to Facebook, but if were not Facebook friends or you don't have it click here, here, and here!