All three of us go for a cruise on a large passenger engine powered catamaran, billed as a dolphin cruise with an option to go swimming with them, though Mary doesn’t even bring her swimsuit.
We start the cruise in the sun, with the sea like green glass and quickly find a pod of bottlenose dolphins. When I went swimming with the dusky dolphins in Kaikoura I found that I preferred watching them from the boat as they treated us to a show of acrobatics. I had already decided not to pay the extra $30 for the privilege of diving in with them, but we are told that if there is an infant in the pod then we are not allowed to go swimming with them and, for this reason, half the trips do not get to go in with the dolphins anyway. We are one of those, though when the captain points out the infant, it is at least two metres long and looks far from vulnerable, though it does keep close to its mother at all times.
Anyway, with the adults being about three metres long, I am not sure that I would want to swim as they slightly scare me. Although their size makes them less acrobatic than their smaller cousins, they do seem more inquisitive and the pod gathers to play around the boat. When the captain switches the engines off, one large male floats still on the port side just a few feet away looking up at the strange upright land creatures making curious ‘oooh’ and ‘aahh’ calls combined with clicks that come from the square blocks with light reflecting circular things in the middle of them that they hold in their hands.
While they can’t do backflips like the dusky dolphins, they do flap their tales at us and do synchronised breaches. They also do a lot of dolphin farting out the spouts in their heads. We are told by the captain that, next to sex, it is their favourite bodily function.
After hanging around with the dolphins for a half hour or so, we leave them to head towards a rock island with a large archway branching out from it (‘The Hole in the Rock’). This is the tour photographer’s last trip before he heads home to England and he wants to fulfil an ambition to swim through the archway. Though the arch is large, the waves swell around within its walls and it is a little bit of a surprise when the captain announces that he too wants to fulfil an ambition by driving the boat through the archway too. The peak of the radar mast that rises just above the control deck at the top of the boat seems to come within inches of the ceiling as we inch our way through, but we make it without any collision, to the surprise of many of the passengers.
We swing around back to the other side of the arch and the captain announces that we can have a snorkelling session here. It is a clear sea and I am one of the first to dive in. There are large schools of fish swimming around the rocks at the bottom, though with the water being about ten metres deep and not having mastered the art of dive snorkelling, I don’t get down too deep. The fish seem to be swimming around my feet as I look down, though with the water being chilly, I keep my limbs moving to keep warm and thus probably deterring them from coming any closer.
The captain of the boat gives us a running commentary of the history and current goings on regarding the various islands we pass by, e.g. certain islands are now not open to the public as they have been bought by well know Kiwi multi-millionaires who have built homes there. He is Dutch, I think, but his English can be somewhat erratic, but he can be quite amusing. As he navigates the hundred foot plus (and a good 20 / 25 foot wide) catamaran between a narrow gap in some rocks, he says he always wanted to see if he could do that, though I am not sure if he was joking.
For lunch, we land on an island where there is a campsite and a restaurant. Curiously, we are not officially allowed to use the restaurant, nor its appended toilets, as it has an exclusivity deal with a rival boat tour company and signs to that effect greet us as we walk off the jetty. However, the staff are indifferent to which boat we have come from and serve us anyway.
From the landing jetty, the island rises up to hills that provide a good vantage point overlooking the bay. Once up the hill, I look back down to where the boat is to see the ship’s captain and the photographer diving about five metres into the water from the iron pillar cross bars that support the jetty. When I get back to the boat, I ask the captain if I have time to emulate their jump. He says yes, but that he has to warn me that I am not supposed to do it, but at the same time saying that he can’t stop me if I want to. A female member of the crew warns me not to do it as I crawl from the upper deck onto the crossing pillar, but I ignore her. I don’t look elegant crossing the bar to the other side of the jetty on my knees, nor do I look elegant diving feet first into the water below. More Brownie points to New Zealand’s residents though for their nod and a wink approach to officialdom.
There are no more wildlife sightings in the afternoon, but we do navigate closely around the ‘Black Rocks’, strangely shaped formations coming out of the sea which were formed by volcanic lava flow.
For the first time since leaving Christchurch, we stay at the same place for as the previous night, once again making use of the ‘wrong kitchen’.
For the first time since leaving Christchurch, we stay at the same place for as the previous night, once again making use of the ‘wrong kitchen’.
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