January 4, 2009 – Christchurch / Kaikura

We enjoyed a terrific bus ride from Christchurch to Kaikura. Amazing scenery. Kaikura is a peninsula with a high mountains (with some residual snow) overlooking the ocean. The beach city is very environmentally conscious and promotes a buy a tree program and several other programs aimed at making the city environmentally friendly. The whale watching was fabulous. The catamaran style jet propulsion boats delivered us to the viewing grounds. We were fortunate to see seven whales. One was sleeping, but we saw six dive. Two of them dived simultaneously. Sperm whales are both resident near Kaikura and transient through the area. There is a huge canyon off-shore from Kaikura that dropped from approximately 200 meters in depth to approximately 1,600 meters. Apparently, the underwater currents provide a mechanism to deliver plenty of food to the sperm whales that eat over a ton of food per day.