In true tourist form, the Ralfs find themselves this morning on a double-hulled catamaran, part of a trip (along with a busload of Germans) to view sperm whales, who are resident within 10 miles of Kaikoura. And no one was disappointed; we came up upon 4 closeup and 3 more from afar, and watched their dark brown hulks breath for the 5 minutes each hour that they hang on the surface before the classic tail flip that propels them up to 800m deep to feed.
"Thar she blows, on the right", and 30 tourists stumble and rush to the right side of the boat, cameras at the ready, with the boat doing a momentary list in that direction. Click, click, click and everyone has captured charming pix of lots of water, one dark dot and perhaps some spray from an exhale. Then comes the big moment of the tail flip, which lasts all of 2 seconds. Let's just say, I got a lot of dud photos.
Gotta hand it to those tourism scientists. The anti-nausea patch worn behind the ear really got ol' soft stomach Gary thru another bumpy boatride. Only after effect is that I was so groggy, I promptly went to the hostel and took a 2 1/2 hour nap, waking for dinner, of course.
Dinner tonite is at the famous Pier Hotel; service was dreadfully slow, but the tele told of another huge disaster, an earthquake and following tsunami, in Japan that pre-empted both the continued Christchurch earthquake followup and a local rugby game. My gosh, what next? The Maori demigods must be really upset at the price of crayfish.
No comments:
Post a Comment