SARAH FACE: New Zealand, Part 9: Boats and Whales

We left the North Island on a ferry. It was very cool to travel on the water, having grown up in a desert.

Here we come, South Island.

I took this picture of a ferry from the deck of a ferry. While I took it, a German guy told me all about how this ferry company had recently tried to expand one of their boats by cutting it down the middle and putting in an extra peice, which cost about $54 mill NZ. This kind of construction works better in the lego world, apparently because in the middle of a trip, they ferry broke a shaft and lost it's massive propeller. Passengers had to be rescued. While we were in NZ, they recovered the propeller--it was 123 meters down!

Luckily, the propeller stayed on for our journey. The only thing that was a bit unnerving about the journey, was being asked repeatedly if I was carrying bees. Yep, bees. Staff members repeatedly questioned, "Do you have any firearms? Do you have any bees? Does your husband have any bees? Are there any bees in your bag?" This made me think "Do I have any bees?" Then I had to remember that I have never, at least knowingly, had bees in my luggage. I later learned that, as a country, New Zealand, is bring their bee population back and they are trying to keep things regulated. Conservation efforts all over the place. Whenever Michael and I left a hotel room or packed up our tent for the rest of the trip we were sure to question each other, "Do you get the bees?" or "Don't forget to bring the bees."

We picked up a new car and traveled south along the coast to Kiakoura. We got to drive through wine country, which was beautiful. No, it was beautiful. Look--this is what the parking lots look like:

We ate lunch and wandered through the vines.

As we got closer to Kiakoura, we were driving right along the coast. We started to wonder what the fuzzy dots on the rocks were. Sea lions. They were baby sea lions.

We thought that was impressive marine life, until the next day. We set up our tent, and read into the sunset.

Not a bad view.

The next morning we woke up, ready to hit the water. Actually, Michael was pretty convinced that he would be throwing up off the back of the boat, but we were still excited. This area is Maori-owned and the gift shop had some sort of natural seasickness suppliment, that cost about $1 and which Michael claims worked 100x better than Dramamine. I'm not so sure. Michael's the guy in the drug study that gets better while taking the placebo.

I think whale watching was amazing. I've been lucky enough to do this in Oregon, but these whales were huge, and because we traveled quite a few miles out into open water, I was left with a feeling of utter tininess. We saw three different sperm whales and watched each one breach for a few minute before they dove down to spend thirty minutes or so deep underwater.

Michael was thoroughly impressed with my whale watching skills and, frankly, so was I. An older British couple told me that I should switch professions. Sounds pretty appealing, actually. There aren't too many times in my life when I've flat out gasped in surprise and awe, but at least half of those times were on this trip.

This is what I am very good a seeing. Maybe it was all those Where's Waldo books. We tried to limit the exclamations of "Thar she blows!" Check out the video at the end of this post. I love that you can hear Michael say, "Wow."

As we headed back to shore, the guide told us were were going to go look at some sea lions. I was a bit sealioned out, so I was about to head inside, when a pod of dolphins burst out from under the boat. They jumped around and made loops under water. They were so fast. I let out another gasp or two.

These are dusky dolphins, which have a large population in the area and are only found in the Southern Hemisphere.

Michael was running around the boat, chasing dolphins, when he saw a little penguin swimming in the water. What an amazing thing that is--to see a penguin swimming in the ocean.

We spent the rest of the day hiking around the inlet. Now, that, was a pretty memorable day!