Travels with Mom and Dad I


After I tried to get Mom and Dad to visit me in New Zealand for so many times, they finally decided to come over for my birthday. It completely mixed up my plans, but I was still very happy that they'd use up almost all of they holidays and go on this crazy 26 hour flight to be with me for my 19th birthday. They arrived on easter monday, April 22, but as I was working I could only arrive in Christchurch 2 days after. I was surprised how I couldn't realize until then how much I missed them...

 The next day we already started our trip with a drive up to Kaikoura to swim with wild dolphins. I've been to Kaikoura before, but the last time I only did a Whale Watch tour as I was sick and I'm not a good swimmer. Driving from Christchurch to Kaikoura takes about 3 hours, and we decided for the morning tour that had best weather and sea conditions. We started at 5am and arrived at about 8am.

 Kaikoura is not only known for all the whales and dolphins, but also for the many New Zealand fur seal colonies, of which we already saw a couple of seals as we drove along the coast. Luckily, we managed to find a spot on the side where we could stop.


At this time the sun was just about to rise so we stayed there for a little bit. Kaikoura is located on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island and a very nice place to see one of those magical golden sunrises.

We rented one of the company's Go-Pro cameras to also get some dolphin footage from the water. All three of us had never used a Go-Pro before, so we only had little outcome, what still didn't bother us.
 

 Just like mom got extra advice on handling her asthma I got some too for not being a good swimmer. I still panicked the first time in the water but it got much better after a small break.
After roughly one hour of swimming we went back on the boat and watched a few pods of dolphins nearby. Some of them showed off their excellent jumping skills, the guide even said they had a dolphin accidentally jumping onto the boat before! 
 The dusky dolphins look a little different to the common dolphin or the bottlenose dolphin, and are only up to 2m in size.

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