Cisco, Yangyang and us took thursday before easter off and flew down to Christchurch for a long easter break on the South Island. Right after we arrived in Christchurch we got our rental car and drove up the east coast to Kaikoura, a small town famous for it's whale-watching tours - and guess what we did there ;)

Normally they only have to go out ~5 nautical miles as there's an ocean ridge which is 2km deep very nearby the coastline. However for some reasons the whales decided to feed further out so we had to go 23 nautical miles, which was bumpy enough that I got to 'review' my lunch. On the way we passed a big group of feeding dolphins who were jumping around and having fun - must have been more than 30 in total. Quite a shame that we just raced on for the whale. We also saw lots of big albatross, in fact our boat nearly crashed into one... Then, a couple of stops later the crew finally located a whale with their big underwater listening device and we got to see a sperm whale. It's the biggest carnivore whale, mainly feeding off giant squid 2km underneath the surface. They dive ~45mins to then refuel with oxygen for a couple of minutes, which was enough time for us to have a peek. Whales are big and heavy, so most of their body stays in the water and you only see the tip. It was a really interesting encouter nontheless!

Friday we hiked up Mount Fyffe just 15mins drive from Kaikoura with excellent views across Kaikoura and the surrounding Moutain Ridge. The peak is at 1600m and you can still hear the ocean! In fact that's one of the unique things of New Zealand: Mountain and sea right next to each other, so you don't need to decide if you're a mountain or sea person, you get both in one day ;)

Then we crossed over to the West coast to see a Seal Colony, the famous Pancake Rocks and a very turbulent sea. We had lot's of fun playing with the waves and got to see both west and east cost in a day.

Our last stop was Akaroa, a former french colony that tries really hard to look french ;) It's just 1.5hrs drive from Christchurch and really a hidden gem. Beautiful scenery and it looks like it's on a big lake, however that's a lagoon, and there's about 30k Hector dolphins living in and around that area. Those are the smallest species of dolphins - only about 1m long. So we got on a boat again to swim with them! It took only 15mins until we got to see the first dolphins, so the crew checked if they were playful enough so that it made sense to throw us overboard to swim with them. We finally got out into the sea for ~30mins and tried to attract them by making funny noises with our swimgear. After all, we are the attraction to the dolphin, not the other way around ;) And we got some really close encounters, they were swimming about 1m from us, diving underneath etc. Really cool! However it can get even better as they sometimes come and play with people. But they're wild animals and do whatever they want. They don't get fed anything by the crew, so if they come and play, they want to play. This time they were just curious.