Dolphin Swimming and Quiz Winning!

Hopping on the Stray Bus the next morning the only five of us on it quickly found ourselves at the Adelphi Lodge in Kaikoura...a little town situated on the coast where the 1.5km deep ocean trench is only just offshore. Being great hunting grounds, huge trenches like this attract massive numbers of sperm whales and dolphins. And that's just what we went to do - go and swim with dolphins!

As the dolphins were wild we were told that we had to do exciting things in order to interest them in us and get them to come and play with us. Everyone watching from the boat found it particularly hilarious to see us swimming in circles and attempting to duck-dive in insanely buoyant wetsuits at the same time as singing to our new dorsal-finned friends.

Our antics proved to work though...I got to swim with at least eight Dusky Dolphins at a once when I dived down and countless others would swim right up to you and then dart away. Absolutely amazing. Then as we were on our penultimate dive a seal came to join in the fun, as did a few Hector's Dolphins. Basically you take your standard dophin, shrink it to become the smallest dolphin in the world and then replace its dorsal fin with a Micky Mouse ear! Totally unique to New Zealand.

Still not having had enough of the sealife, Dermot and I went for a wee cycle along the coast seal spotting. We found one sleeping on a rock...where I got insanely close to one for a photo though I was poised to run at any given moment!

That evening the dolphin-team from the Kiwi, Magic and Stray busses teamed up for what was an awe-inspiring quiz-round at the Strawberry Tree. Well our performance tailed-off towards the end but we still clinched the title by one point (having gone from about 20 points clear) and bagged ourselves a bar tab for our troubles! What an awesome first night to begin the tour!