Kayaking Kaikoura

After getting the tires changed out on our camper van back in Christchurch, Tim and I drove north up the east coast of the South Island to Kaikoura, a town known for its sealife.

Our first Kaikoura adventure: kayaking!

We picked a lovely day to head out on the water, sunny and not too cold.

Pre-kayaking on-shore prep:

The kayaking was lovely... peaceful waters, lots of wildlife. It was our first time using a kayak with a rudder:

We headed over to a rocky outcropping to see if we could catch sight of some of the New Zealand fur seals...

Found some! These two jumped in the water, curious about the kayaks:

Gah, just look at that scenery behind the seals!

After those seals got bored with us, we putzed around a bit in the bay and found some more, cold chillin' on the rocks.

Tim loves posing with seals:

Next: dolphins!

We happened upon a pod of Dusky dolphins! They swam circles around us, popping up occasionally:

We thought it was pretty exciting to see them zipping around us, including right under our kayaks, but our guide seemed a little disappointed because they can be pretty acrobatic. But I still found it cool when they swam right under our kayaks:

Here's some terrible video we shot with the GoPro. Sticking your hand in that water was damn cold!!

After the dolphins got bored with us, our guide insisted on taking the perfect action shot of us in front of the mountains. Perfect meaning in sync with our paddles. It took a few shots to get it right ;-)

Here it is in motion:

Pretty gorgeous scenery:

Our guide also insisted on a "triumph" pose photo, too:

And then we kayaked back, in our uncoordinated fashion:

Good times:

We had also been promised penguins... we finally saw this one lone guy, who kinda looked like a duck floating there:

And that was that... a lovely morning in Kaikoura!

Komodo: Everything Else

So, I've already told you about the major components of our Komodo trip, namely the boat, the dives and the Komodo dragons themselves.  But there were some other shenanigans that happened on and off the boat throughout the trip.

1. Dolphins! Right before our last dive, Tim caught sight of a couple dolphins breaking the surface near our boat. Willie catered to our whims and directed the dive boat to try to move closer to them so we could have a quick snorkel with them.  While they weren't particularly interested in snorkeling with us, we did catch a couple good glimpses of them. (We may have dolphin video in the near future- Mr. Ben got some good underwater shots).

Turns out there were not just a couple, but 5 or 6 adult dolphins, at least 2 babies, and one dolphin with some sort of tumor or something on his head. 

2. We took a brief hike on one of the small, uninhabited (well, by people) island somewhere between Komodo and Rinca.  There were definitely goats on the island, and we hoped there were definitely no Komodo dragons.

Our dive boat just pulled right up on the beach.  See our liveaboard boat in the background...

We hiked that path straight up the side of the mountain.  Actually pretty steep!

Hikin'

Smilin'

Lookin'

As I said, these islands were really dry... like crispy.  It was a far cry from the soggy Jakarta (it's poured every day here in the city since we returned from Komodo). But the views on the hike were amazing. 

Awesome views.

Hikers in the distance.

Those ripples in the water were a whole bunch of fish jumping around.

3.  No photos of this, but as I said, Ben had a wicked stomach flu while we were on the boat and got sick in the middle of the night.  The next morning he told us that, in the dark of night, he left his cabin and went to the side of the boat to get sick.  Right after throwing up, he saw a large shark swim up to the boat and eat his vomit.  A new type of chum? 

4. There was a huge storm one of the days we were out on the boat... huge.   You could see it looming in the distance for a while, but when it hit the boat, we literally had to batten down the hatches.  

Storm's abrewin'.

The cloud looks like it's going to eat this little boat.

Shelter from the storm?

5. Finally, we did a bit of jumping off the boat into the beautiful water. It was pretty high off the second story of the boat!  Floating in the water, it seemed like you were at the end of the world... so peaceful.