Salt Life

Ok, so this one is actually going to be short but sorry it's later than usual.  It's mostly videos, so hopefully they work!

Friday, after going to class of course, we drove up to Kaikoura, which is about 6.5hrs north.  It was my longest road trip so far, but wasn't too bad.  We made a pit stop at Moeraki Boulders--large, perfectly

rounded boulders on the beach.  There were two car fulls, and the first car went earlier and already had a fire going on the beach at our campsite too!  Saturday morning, we got up and went to SeaFest, which is a big festival of local beer and seafood.  I had scallops, fish, and paua (which was my favourite) and a few other things too!  It was delicious, then after that, we went to Ohau Stream, which is where seals often have their pups.  There is a pool at the base of a waterfall where there were at least 20 of the pups playing around!  Then, we went back and had another bonfire on the beach, and Sunday morning we went swimming with dolphins!

Swimming with the Dusky dolphins was incredible!  There were literally about 200 of them and the boat gets you in the best position, you swim, then when they move, you get out and repeat the process.  They are small in dolphin standards, but still at least my size, if not larger.  Also, it was really cool because they are curious, so they'll come right at you (but I didn't freak out like I did with the sea lion).  They're known for being acrobatic, so after doing four snorkels with them, we got about 30 minutes to just follow them on the boat and watch them.  And, to top it off, on the way back, we saw albatross (a huge and rare bird), the captain saw a penguin (I didn't see it), and we got to see a humpback whale breach!

Like I said, pretty short post.  After two nights camping without a sleeping pad, my mattress felt great!  The weather was really nice this weekend, but back to cold and dreary this week unfortunately.  Anyway, this is my last week of class--can't believe how fast it flew by! Caption: Moeraki Boulders