Akaora - Swimming with dolphns

Today was a day for rude awakenings.  At 4am,  my mobile phone went off.  I scrabbled to answer it and it turned out to be someone after the phone number of another photographer..that I don't have anyway.  Eventually I got back to sleep though Maria was not so lucky,  the call had woken her up and apparently my snoring was keeping her awake.   As I don't actually snore (at least I have never heard it) all I can think is the poor girl had dosed off and dreamt it.  I woke up on time but  let Maria have a lie-in till about 10 to 8 to catch up on her sleep.

Eventually she got up and she was in the bathroom when, slowly at first the building started to shake.  It really was a strange sensation,  a bit like being on a boat but in something that shouldn't be a boat!  A slightly shocked looking Maria stuck her head out the bathroom door and said "did the building just move?" - on yes came the reply.  Apparently it was a quake of 4.8 (on the scale for these things),  which is not major by any means.  Though I did notice that the hotel staff send their trolleys up in the lifts but take the stairs.  As one cleaner said to us, "there's no way I'm getting in there".

After breakfast it was time to drive to Akaora for swimming with dolphins.  Akaora is a massive extinct volcano, about an hour and a bits drive outside of Christchurch.  Yet again the scenery is stunning.
Akaora, was first settled by the French and like Quebec it is full of people pretending to be French to annoy American tourists...and where's the harm in that! 

Akaora

And so the swimming with dolphins, begins.  Now they seem to have a game they play on unsuspecting tourists:  Give the fat bloke a wetsuit two sizes too small,  tell him it's supposed to be tight and then let him struggle to get into it.  They played the same trick on a young 8 year old lad as well,  so whilst everyone else seemed to have no problem getting them on we were both completely exhausted wrestling with the things.  It got to the point where I nearly said "I don't care about the sodding dolphins" but I finally got myself into the thing.  apart from doing the backup zip up.  The lady in charge zipped me up saying "it's supposed to be tight" - but my screams convinced her that I might not have the right size!  So she relented and gave me a bigger wet-suite that I got on with no difficulty.

The Harbor

We then climbed aboard our small fast boat to go look for the Hector Dolphins,  which are an endangered species and the smallest dolphins in the world.  We came across one pod that was already playing with some people in the water and didn't seem interested in us,  so off we went in search of more.

Captain of the ship

Having found 3 or 4 dolphins who seemed interested in us the ladder went down the side of the boat and all 12 of us bobbed out into the water to see if we could attract the dolphins.  At first they seemed a bit interested in me, as I was singing to them down my snorkel but after a couple of passes they lost interest.  I think me in a wet-suite looked too much like a killer-whale and scared them off! 

Just a hint of dolphin

We spent most of our time bobbing about waiting for them to come back,  trouble is the wetsuit boots are quite buoyant and if you lose concentration they suddenly bob to the surface and make your head go under water (any swimming has to be done upright!) .  Maria had the feet-floating drowning thing a few too many times and decide to spend the rest of the time in the boat.  She actually got to see more of the dolphins than those of us in the water did and got to see a penguin float past too!

All too soon our time was up.  The dolphins hadn't really been interested in us,  which is a shame but that's the thing with wild animals they are a bit unpredictable...wild even. Once back, it was out of the wetsuits, changed and we could even collect our photos.  Not really much point in having a photo of yourself without a dolphin, so we didn't bother!

We took a look round the town and eventually found a bistro for our evening meal that had 2 or 3 thing on the menu that not only could Maria eat,  she actually quite liked the sound of!  Apparently the owner of the restaurant is a vegetarian, and always makes sure there are at least 2 veggie dishes on the menu.  Well hurrah for that.

View on way home (taken from a moving car)

Then it was a pleasant drive back to quake-city and time for bed.  Apparently there was another quake at 10:45 but we didn't notice it!