Whales and dolphins and seals, oh my!

What a wonderful day to go out and look for marine wildlife!  The coastal area of Kaikoura is gorgeous.

There she blows!

I'm determined to see a whale on this trip, because the last time I went on a whale watching tour I only saw itty bitty bits of the huge whale.  I got my wish, as we managed to get close to two of them.  I missed the pretty tail "flip" shot because I wanted to see the whale (vs watch it through my camera), but I like this one for the water spout and you can see some of the top of his body.

Our boat then motors over to a favorite sunbathing rock, and we spot several seals enjoying the heat and light.

How many seals do you see?  I found three!

Then we get "attacked" by a pod of dolphins.  There are well over 100. I've never seen so many at one time!  They frolic and play around our boat.  I even see one doing backflips in the air - I didn't realize they do that in the wild (I just thought they were taught it in the aquarium shows).  I almost got a video of him, but I started recording too late. 

How many dolphins do you see?

I wonder what would have happened if I jumped in to swim with them??

Handsome man!

 

Beautiful day!

After being out on the water, we continued on our way to Blenheim, in Marlborough...my favorite wine region!  The drive was just as pretty today.

And I saw my new favorite sign.  This is a copy; I couldn't get Steve to drive back so I could take a picture, but I really saw it posted on the side of the road in New Zealand.

Why wait?  Just get it straight from the vine!

Driving can be thirsty work, so we stopped in at Yealands to try some of their wines.  We also learned about a company that would ship wine to Japan for us....but we were to find out later that maybe we didn't have all the details....

The Yealand vineyards stretch (literally) as far as the eye can see.